Therefore, it is not an outlandish possibility that Mulcahy could have been appointed CS. However, if he was appointed, Brugha, despite his display of extraordinary physical bravery during the rebellion and despite his Trojan work in reforming the Volunteers during the previous two years, had been bypassed. More so, Brugha must have felt uncomfortable witnessing, as he considered it, the undesirable influence of the IRB manipulating national events yet again. On the other hand, Brugha was certainly not attracted by the prospect of a fulltime, albeit remunerated, position, preferring instead to continue to work and to draw a salary as salesman for ecclesiastical candle makers, Lawlor Ltd.45
Be that as it may, the rise to prominence of another problem, which had been pending for quite a while and which would demand a unique display of public unity in order for it to be solved, sent shock waves throughout society.46 On 10 April, Lloyd George introduced another Military Services Bill to the Commons.47 This Bill was broader in its reach than the original Military Services Act of 27 January 1916. As a consequence then, should the Bill be enacted and should it be applied to Ireland by the signing of an Order in Council, Irish men between the ages of eighteen and a half and fifty years of age, rather than between nineteen and forty-two, as heretofore, would become eligible for call-up.
In response, the following events, involving the leaders of church and politics, produced a virtuous circle of mass pacifistic protest: the Roman Catholic hierarchy’s public statement of opposition to the measure made through the medium of their standing committee, on 9 April,48 and, due to distrust in Lloyd George’s Home Rule/conscription quid pro quo, especially when it flew in the face of recent, unconditional, self-government negotiations, the IPP returned home from Westminster in protest to side with Sinn Féin on 18 April.49
But, in actual fact, the body, which might conceivably have had the biggest say ultimately in the outcome of those proceedings, was the first to respond. On 3 April, at a meeting which was held in Mulcahy’s house, the members of the Volunteer resident executive, of their own accord, formally decided to continue to implement their own version of passive resistance. This is to say that brinkmanship would be indulged in with the purpose of convincing Lloyd George that he would have a fight on his hands, should he decide to proceed further: ‘If arrested they had orders to be defiant of authority and … If, while in possession of arms their arrest was attempted, the arms should be used in an effort to prevent their loss.’50
As can be gathered, therefore, brinkmanship proved to be a difficult and potentially divisive strategy to operate. Robert Brennan’s take on it indicates as much: ‘The Volunteers in general were hoping that the British would go ahead with their conscription plans. They would have cheerfully faced a fight in which they would have the backing of the whole Irish people, but there was a great deal of misgiving when rumours began to fly that the Volunteers would strike first without giving the British time to complete their conscription plans.’51
The sort of happenings to which Brennan was referring had been evident for quite a while. For example, as early as 2 March, an instruction had to be promulgated prohibiting the raiding of private houses for arms.52 Even so, another very obvious and very rich source was found. On St Patrick’s Day, the first raid on an RIC barracks attempted by the post-Rebellion Volunteers occurred at Eyeries on the Beara Peninsula. And, on 13 April, at Gortatlea between Killarney and Tralee, the second was conducted, this time causing the death of two Volunteers.53
Then, two surprising and significant events materialised, events which gave greater freedom of manoeuvre to Collins and Béaslaí, who were in favour of those types of actions. On 30 April, by permission of a clause emanating from the Volunteer convention of the previous October whereby the executive was empowered ‘to “declare war” if it was thought necessary’,54 Brugha travelled to London on a six-month mission to exterminate the members of the British Cabinet, should conscription be peremptorily introduced.55 And de Valera, together with most of the Sinn Féin leadership, was arrested on 17 May on the wrongful accusation that he was involved in the importation of arms from Germany, otherwise known as the German Plot; this was an accusation for which he received a nine-month period of detention in Lincoln Jail.56
From the point of view of Collins and Mulcahy, Brugha’s absence was a far more significant event than de Valera’s was. If nothing else, for the time being at least, his edgy watchfulness did not have to be endured. But also, seemingly, in hatching and bringing forward the assassination idea for the unanimous acceptance of the Volunteer national executive, his contradictory, extreme, physical force radicalism might have momentarily been an embarrassment to Collins, who otherwise was enthusiastic,57 and to Mulcahy, who harboured mixed views.58 For example, according to Sceilg, who admittedly was not a neutral observer of events, Collins and Mulcahy ignored Brugha’s request of them to accompany him on the venture: ‘I asked three times of those who were alongside me if they wanted to make the journey; but the big heroes let on that they did not hear me, and [so] I had to go in their absence.’59
The reality, however, was that Brugha needed Collins and Mulcahy, or rather he needed their IRB connections.60 The upshot was that Mulcahy was saddled with the job of getting men to sign up. He managed to locate thirteen – four from Ireland and nine from England. He personally interviewed the first four. His approach was capable but not authoritative, as if he was in awe of such physical courage:
Mulcahy gave me to understand that the chances of any of the party of Volunteers surviving subsequent to those executions would be one in a million … without saying so, [he] gave me the impression that I had the option of withdrawing from the venture should I wish to do so. Needless to say, I was appalled by the task we were expected to undertake but having volunteered I was not withdrawing now.61
In a way, therefore, Brugha and Collins were not poles apart on a number of issues. For example, both men were under no illusions about the inevitability of defeat if another insurrection was forced on the country. Also, like Brugha, Collins envisioned a role for violence, but admittedly during and not at the end of the process of brinkmanship. And there was no escaping the fact that Collins greatly admired Brugha as a fighter. (Ernie O’Malley also admired Brugha as ‘the most uncompromising of all the army officers’.62) For that reason, he prevented the IRB from publicising Brugha’s expulsion from the IRB (Brugha had already left anyway) on the grounds of his public allegations of cowardice on the part of the Organisation during the Rebellion: ‘the organisation would lose its prestige by expelling a man like Cathal Brugha’.63 He also became indignant when such a pre-eminent Volunteer as Brugha, now ‘a white man … half crippled with English bullets’, came a long way down the list in the election of the new, but moderate, Sinn Féin executive.64
Nonetheless, considerations of that type were not enough for the two to be close. A clash of temperaments was a problem, what with Collins’ bustling dynamism and Brugha’s saturnine doggedness. Much more fundamentally, Brugha, especially now that it was obvious that Sinn Féin was developing a catch-all appeal, was not a bit happy that Collins and a small group of senior Dublin-based officers were starting to bond together and to use their own version of the IRB’s traditional conspiratorial techniques. Brugha perceived this as a particularly threatening development, more especially when most members of that clique, Collins and Mulcahy especially, were now moving steadily towards becoming tribunes in a prospective Irish professional army.
But, in comparison to de Valera, who was anxious too, Brugha did not keep his thoughts to himself:
Later in the Summer of that year (1917) … I was in Limerick at Daly’s … when Cathal Brugha … came in … a discussion arose over the IRB … he got very excited and said that he was out to destroy it. He went on to say that if that organisation had ever been necessary, which he doubted, it was now unnecessary and even dangerous if it got into the hands of the wrong people.65
And, as good as his word, during a meeting of the Volunteer executive, which must have happened just before Brugha went abroad on 30 April and which makes it possible that the British had good reason for the