The French press was far more interested in the Irish question in America as an aspect of Anglo-American relations and, in turn, how this might affect Franco-British relations than it was in circumstances in Ireland itself. During the spring of 1920, this began to change when Irish Catholic criticisms of a British declaration of a military curfew in Ireland (the first of many) evoked a response in Catholic France. Virtually alone amongst Parisian deputies, Marc Sangnier, who was also France’s leading Christian-democratic thinker,87 began to speak regularly in favour of complete Irish independence at public meetings. Although Sangnier’s influence in France was limited somewhat by the fact that he was widely considered to be a dated politician with a pre-1914 worldview,88 he professed to be willing, if requested by the Dáil, to either offer his pen or speak in the French National Assembly on behalf of Ireland.89 Unlike the situation in America, there was not a noticeable Irish community in France. Nevertheless, Michael MacWhite, a Sinn Féiner and former French Foreign Legionnaire who operated a small Franco-Irish Society, served the Irish Parisian consulate well by generating publicity in the French press. The tenor of a weekly Irish Bulletin, which detailed all acts of British coercion and was distributed internationally in the wake of the suppression of the Dáil, would seem to have made some impression in France. Sympathetic press reporting became more common in sectional (Catholic as well as socialist) as well as provincial (agricultural as well as municipal) French newspapers.90 However, as the Irish department of foreign affairs noted, the French national press was far more guarded because:
The fear of Germany is so great that France is very anxious not to break with England. Hence official France is not prepared to take the side of Ireland in her present struggle. The Paris press is for the most part governed in its outlook by the prevailing official viewpoint and is accordingly very guarded in its expressions on Irish questions.91
Considering that pro-Irish press reportage in France was ‘activity which comes more properly under the head of propaganda’, Duffy and O’Kelly were far from enthusiastic about this situation and so, by the summer of 1920, had already become doubtful of the continued value of the Parisian diplomatic mission. That autumn, after French press interviews were arranged with Griffith and Duffy, both men issued direct appeals to the French government to protest against Britain’s treatment of Terence MacSwiney, the imprisoned mayor of Cork who, in common with many Irish political prisoners, had gone on hunger strike. In doing so, however, Duffy broke with protocol by publishing his appeal, prompting the British consulate in Paris to demand that Duffy be expelled from France immediately. As the French had to comply, Duffy relocated to Belgium. After being allowed a final sympathetic French press interview in his defence, he left for Rome, where he joined a by now ailing Sean T. O’Kelly.92 Inspired partly by some initial Irish efforts with the Italian press, they began focusing on the idea that Ireland should present itself to Catholic Europe as a ‘bulwark of religion in a godless world’.93
Sections of the French media were willing to question the wisdom of British plans to partition Ireland. The Revue du Politique et Parlementaire, a prominent French journal, deemed Westminster’s Government of Ireland Act to be an unjust act that was inherently doomed to fail because it was endeavouring to create ‘two Irish provinces, but no Ireland; a Quebec, or an Ontario perhaps, but no Canada’.94 In common with most of the international press,95 French journalists were impressed by MacSwiney’s hunger-strike protest, leading to frequent critiques of British military rule in Ireland, although British protests would mean that this trend virtually ceased by the spring of 1921.96 Being eager to negate Irish attempts to appeal to American opinion, David Lloyd George, the British prime minister, wanted to convince the international community that the Dáil and its supporters should be viewed akin to how the Confederacy was viewed by the Union during the American civil war, considering this claim to be an effective counter to de Valera’s argument that the only potential parallel between contemporary Irish circumstances and American history dated from 1776.97 London used this civil war claim to justify its stance that Irish rebels should be treated according to pre-existing law without recognising their right either to secede from the Union or to receive formal acknowledgement of their status as belligerents or political prisoners. It was clear to all observers, however, that this campaign was not working, particularly on a moral level. Due to local government elections, by the summer of 1920, Irish republican volunteers were able to supplant the authority of British police forces (many of whom voluntarily retired) as peacekeepers across most of the country, prompting Lloyd George to send army battalions of 60,000 men to Ireland to take their place. These British soldiers, however, found themselves in a situation in which they had no clearly defined responsibility other than to wield by virtue of their armed physical presence the moral authority of regular policing forces of law and order, which little to none of the general Irish populace was prepared to give them. This was reflected by the fact that as many as 100,000 unarmed men pledged to offer their services to the Irish volunteer movement in opposition to this British armed presence.98
In Boland’s absence, Michael Collins, as acting president of the IRB (which had no more than 3,000 members), had used its secret networks in an effort to coordinate the activities of all Irish volunteer officers with the view to systemically create the basis of an Irish republican police force and army. However, the Dáil itself had no regular army. Most Irish republican volunteers performed regular civilian jobs and only about 3,000 in total had firearms. While there were several thousand volunteers in the Irish capital, the ‘Acting Service Unit’ in Dublin of would-be permanent Irish soldiers, who were essentially akin to mere infantrymen, amounted to just fifty men. The old revolutionary organisation of the IRB supplied this nucleus by providing a small permanent staff and an officer corps, but the directive power of its General Headquarters (GHQ) was limited because of the Dáil’s restricted administrative capacity outside Dublin. The IRB, which also acted as an intelligence department for the underground Dáil, was prepared to kill a number of British intelligence agents in Dublin whenever they attempted to seize the Irish government’s funds. Actual confrontations with British forces, however, was confined to the activities of a few flying columns of volunteers in Munster over whom GHQ exercised virtually no control. Particularly during the spring of 1921, some of these men attempted to resist by force the imposition of a British military curfew in Cork. This curfew was designed to punish all sympathisers with MacSwiney’s hunger strike by burning Cork city to the ground and summarily executing any armed member of the general Irish public. The Sinn Féin mayor of Limerick was also shot dead by Crown forces at this time.99
Ever since the summer of 1920, British attempts to force Ireland to meet its terms had increased the number of British and American foreign correspondents that visited Ireland.100 Supporters of the Dáil knew, however, that the purpose of these men was simply to collect intelligence reports on Irish politics purely for their own governments’ benefit. Therefore, they were not taken fully into their confidence.101 The Irish correspondent of Le Temps, a semi-governmental French organ, also worked as an intelligence intermediary