blood

"It is a source of endless wonder that these two islands lying side by side off the coast of Europe should have been the fount of so much anguish, each for the other. One spawned the mightiest empire in history, and its arrogant overlords were loathed by their oppressed neighbors across the Irish sea. The other -- small, poor, with virtually no valuable natural resources -- supported a people conspicuously lacking in political gifts and afflicted with an extraordinary incidence of alcoholism. "It is a very moist climate," Churchill once observed. Yet endowed with immense charm, romantic vision, and remarkable genius, it was the homeland of Swift, Shore, Yeats, Joyce, Millington Synge, O'Casey, O'Faolain, and Dublin's Abbey Theater."

"In August 1919, when the Dail was proclaimed an illegal organization, Churchill, then still minister of war, told the cabinet that the time was not propitious for an Irish solution. Yet something had to be done. Violence had become the official policy of Eire's real leaders. The relationship between their "Irish Republic" and Great Britain amounted to a state of war. In the United States -- where he had raised over five million dollars from Irish Americans -- De Valera, describing negotiations between Dublin and London, said that 'the hand of Irishmen held out in good faith was spurned and spat upon.' Eire's hands now held grenades or revolvers. That year the IRA was responsible for eighteen murders of Englishmen, seventy-seven armed attacks, and an attempt to ambush the viceroy. In 1920 it grew worse. On March 26 the resident magistrate in Dublin was dragged from a streetcar and slain on the spot. Clementine wrote Winston: 'This new Irish murder is very terrible.' He replied that Irish terrorism was 'really getting very serious. . . What a diabolical streak they have in their character! I expect it is that treacherous, assassinating, conspiring trait which has done them in bygone ages of history and prevented them from being a great responsible nation with stability and prosperity.'"

William Manchester

The Last Lion: Volume I