LITMIR.BIZ

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the Central Opera House. Both Cumann na mBan and the Volunteers were organised in the city, renting premises on the Upper East Side.25 The Irish-American community supported republican events in significant numbers and eight thousand people attended a Gaelic football tournament under the auspices of the Volunteers at Celtic Park in August 1917.26 Mellows regularly inspected the New York Volunteers, who were commanded by Major Thomas J. Nolan; however, he ended his association in April 1917, when, with America’s entry into the war, the New York Volunteers pledged ‘to make a tender of the services of the regiment to President Wilson’.27 The New York Volunteers’ decision to support the burgeoning American war effort was the first manifestation of the cleavage in revolutionary circles that was to emerge between Irish-Americans, whose primary allegiance was to their country of birth, and the Irish in America, who saw America’s wartime alliance with Great Britain as a betrayal of Ireland’s claim for independence. America’s ‘duty to Ireland’ and her apparent betrayal of that debt through her alliance with Britain was to be one of the abiding themes of Mellows’ public speeches, making him a problematic figure for Clan na Gael, who wholeheartedly supported America’s war effort during a time of heightened national patriotism.

      Mellows’ attitude to American life was coloured by the US government’s approach to Ireland’s claim for independence, which was dictated by their wartime alliance with Britain. Unlike most speakers at Irish-American political meetings, Mellows made no effort to conceal his contempt for the stance of the US government. His comrade Alfred White recalled, ‘at his first public meeting in America, he refused to use the “safe” speech written for him and spoke as he thought’.28 White even claimed the Clan tried to send Mellows and fellow Sinn Féin TD Patrick McCartan to Germany, ostensibly in search of arms; however, ‘it was an easy way of getting rid of both of them in the awkward situation brought about by the war’.29 Mellows’ closest personal friend in New York, Fr Peter Magennis, provided a succinct summation of his comrades in the Clan, ‘again and again the question comes into my mind can men who stoop so low to hit so meanly be really sincere in their major works and yet I think they are sincere, in so far as they can see’.30

      In January 1918, William J. Flynn, Chief of the United States Secret Service, tendered his resignation from the force he had led for six years to loud approval from the Irish community in New York. The Gaelic American newspaper claimed credit for helping ‘run Flynn the brute out of town’ for his attempts to ‘hurt the Irish people’ by labelling them ‘disloyal’ and ‘traitors to America’.31 Flynn earned the ire of the city’s Irish-American revolutionaries for his aggressive campaign against them, and in particular, the manufacture of a ‘German Plot’ in 1917 that saw several senior figures imprisoned, central among them, the recently arrived Liam Mellows.32 The ‘plot’ was a component of a wider campaign, led, John Devoy claimed, by ‘Anglomaniac politicians and newspapers’ who ‘assailed the Irish cause’.33 As ever, the affair generated lingering suspicions and accusations of betrayal among the revolutionaries themselves that were to have lasting consequences.34

      The Committee on Public Information led by George Creel was a powerful wartime governmental agency created to generate public support for America’s entry into the First World War.35 In late September 1917, the agency leaked information to the New York papers alleging that the Secret Service had uncovered a ‘German plot’ to attack England from Irish naval bases, facilitated by Clan na Gael in New York. The Gaelic American hit back at the allegations accusing the Mayor of New York, John P. Mitchel, and William J. Flynn of being the authors of the ‘plot’, claiming their ‘evident object is to help England in her hopeless endeavour to hold Ireland down, and to bolster up Mitchel’s tottering political fortunes’.36 The ‘revelations’ centred around the ‘discovery’ of cipher documents discussing a proposed German landing in Ireland, along with papers pertaining to Roger Casement’s attempt to organise German support for the 1916 Rising, found in the possession of German agent Von Igel. Implicated in the documents were Clan leaders, Judge Daniel Cohalan and John Devoy, along with the German ambassador, Von Bernstorff. The ‘plot’ was an obvious attempt to blacken the patriotic wartime credentials of the Clan and drive a wedge between Irish-Americans and the Fenian network by establishing a link between the German High Command and the Clan in New York. Devoy responded to the plot by pointing out ‘the purpose of the attack is plain. It is to injure the cause of Irish nationalism in the minds of the American people.’37 Likewise, Judge Cohalan countered by claiming ‘the loyalty of those of Irish blood is being attacked’ and, reaffirming Irish-Americans’ loyalty to their country of birth, ‘the record of the Irish throughout the entire history of the country has been one of unconditional and uncompromising loyalty, and whatever their sympathies in the great World War had been before our entrance into the struggle, they are now, as they always have been, for America, first, last and all the time’.38 While Cohalan’s denial represented a defence of Irish-America’s loyalty to the United States, implicit in his statement was a disavowal of Mellows, who repeatedly criticised America’s support for Britain in front of packed public meetings. For Irish-American leaders in New York, Mellows had become a potential threat to the patriotic credentials of the entire Irish-American community and, in particular, the Clan.

      Events came to a head in October 1917 with Mellows’ arrest by the Secret Service: he was charged with being in possession of a forged seaman’s passport and purporting to represent himself as an American citizen.39 Imprisoned in the Tombs Jail, while his close associate Patrick McCartan languished in jail in Halifax, Canada, things went from bad to worse when none other than the Mayor of New York, John P. Mitchel, claimed at a public meeting in Brooklyn that Mellows had made a full confession concerning the activities of John Devoy and his associates. Incensed by the claim, Mellows wrote an indignant letter to the press repudiating the notion that he would ever become an informer and challenging the mayor to a fist fight, which alas, Mitchel ignored.40

      Labelled a quisling and languishing in jail, Mellows’ situation was compounded by the suspiciously slow efforts of the Clan to provide the $7,000 bail money required to secure his release. In November, the plot thickened with the arrest of another Irishman, Thomas Walsh, who, it was claimed, was carrying ‘secret correspondence’ allegedly written by Mellows pertaining to the activities of the IRB in Ireland and New York.41 The Gaelic American believed the whole affair to have been contrived to re-enforce the guilt of ‘General Mellows’, as the Secret Service described him, and ‘manufactured for the purpose of making a frame-up’.42 The claims prompted Mellows to send another refutation of the evidence being presented against him to the press, claiming he had ‘never in his life seen’ the documents.43 Decrying the whole affair as ‘an attempt to prevent President Wilson from bringing pressure to bear on England to make her consent to Irish Independence’, Clan na Gael condemned ‘the literary output of falsehoods’ produced by a ‘literary ignoramus’ for a ‘reckless nincompoop’.44

      Mellows and McCartan finally had their day in Federal Court in May 1919 when they were tried for securing seamen’s passports under assumed names with both men pleading guilty. The judge took the view that the ‘seriousness of the offense depended on the purpose for which the papers were procured’.45 The men’s defence claimed the court could not undertake to punish the duo ‘for any supposed intention which they might have affecting the British Empire’ and denied they had any ‘intent to conspire against the laws of the United States’. Judge Billings Learned Hand agreed with the defence that the men could not be charged under the Espionage Act with any act against the interests of the United States and found them guilty of possession of false passports and released them both with a fine of $250. The affair drove a wedge between the Irish ‘exiles’ in New York and Irish-Americans in the Clan, with both factions increasingly suspicious of the other’s intentions.

      The arrival of Éamon de Valera in the US as President of Dáil Éireann, in June 1919, heralded sixteen months of frantic activity for Mellows, accompanying Dev on his extensive speaking tour, often travelling ahead of the ‘Chief’ to make advance arrangements for his public meetings. The purpose of the trip was to generate much-needed funds for the revolutionary state established in January 1919 with the founding of Dáil Éireann and to secure political recognition from President Wilson’s US administration for Ireland’s declaration of independence. Despite failing to secure official recognition of the republic, the tour was a remarkable success in terms

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