Pivoting towards wartime loyalty

AMERICAN IRISH HISTORICAL SOCIETY

By Michael Doorley

April 2017 represents the centenary month of the United States’ entry into the First World War. American participation in the war, from April 6, marked a significant turning point in Allied fortunes. True, it would take almost a year for the U.S. to fully mobilize its considerable economic and demographic resources. However, by early 1918, American troops had begun to arrive in significant numbers and not only helped to stem the German spring offensive on the Western Front but also played a decisive role in the costly campaigns which led to Allied victory. American combat deaths in the First World War numbered 53,000. When deaths from disease such as “Spanish Flu” are included, the total death toll figure rises to over 116,000. This made it the third costliest military campaign in American history after the Second World War and Civil War.

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Michael Doorley, right, with fellow scholar and Echo writer Terry Golway at last year's Glucksman Ireland House seminar on the 1916 Rising at Pier A. Doorley will speak at St. Paul Irish Arts Week on April 24 [www.irishfair.com].

PHOTO: PETER MCDERMOTT

The attitude of Irish-American nationalists to the war in Europe was a complex one and reveals the often conflicting pressures upon Irish-America to both demonstrate its loyalty to the American flag and to support the Irish nationalist cause in Ireland. Prior to the outbreak of the war in Europe in 1914, divisions within Irish-American nationalism mirrored those within Ireland itself. Until then most Irish-Americans who took an interest in Irish nationalism favored John Redmond’s parliamentary efforts to secure Home Rule. Meanwhile, a minority backed John Devoy’s militant Clan na Gael which shared the same Irish republican ambitions as its sister organization in Ireland, the Irish Republican Brotherhood.

Britain’s decision to enter the war against Germany and Redmond’s support for the British war effort led to a sea change in Irish-American nationalist opinion. Even the Irish World, a long-time supporter of the Irish Parliamentary Party in the past, declared that for Redmond to “fritter away any part of her [Ireland’s] military resources would be treason of the blackest kind.” The Clan na Gael now saw an opportunity to create a more broad-based organization which would appeal to Irish-American opinion. New York State Supreme Court Judge Daniel Cohalan, a trusted confident of Devoy, played a prominent role in these efforts. Cohalan organized the First Irish Race Convention in New York in 1916 attended by over 2,500 Irish-Americans from across the United States. Out of this convention the Friends of Irish Freedom organization emerged.

Michael Doorely, second from right, at the Pier A event last year. PHOTO: PETER MCDERMOTT

The Friends of Irish Freedom, as its name suggests, had as its stated objective to “encourage and assist any movement that will bring the national independence of Ireland.” The important contribution of the FOIF, the Clan and other Irish-American organizations and individuals to the 1916 Rising has been recently well documented in the recent publication “Ireland’s Allies: American and the 1916 Easter Rising” (2016) edited by Miriam Nyhan Grey. However, the FOIF had other more American-centric goals shaped by the war in Europe. Cohalan and Devoy believed that Britain was working behind the scenes to enlist the United States on the Allied side in the European conflict.

These beliefs had some justification. Not unnaturally, the British government sought to enlist the United States as an ally in its life and death struggle against Germany. In 1914, the Asquith government established a war propaganda bureau known as Wellington House to inform and influence public opinion abroad. A special section within the bureau devoted itself to cultivating American elite opinion in favor of the Allied side. It supplied 13,000 Americans and 500 newspapers with news of the war.

The FOIF mounted a counterpropaganda campaign calling for American neutrality and challenged what it described as the pro-British movement in the United States. Following the 1916 Easter Rising, the FOIF held public demonstrations condemning the executions of rebel prisoners but such demonstrations also attempted to tap into traditional isolationist and anti-colonial sentiment. On the Feb. 4, 1917, at a New York public meeting of the FOIF, Judge Cohalan declared that if the United States fought on the side of the Allies, it “would be fighting for the combined subjection of Ireland, India and Egypt to English rule.”

In the face of deteriorating relations between the United States and Germany, particularly in relation to the resumption of unrestricted German submarine warfare, this FOIF campaign failed. On the April 6, 1917, the United States declared war on Germany. American intervention in the war presented Irish-American nationalists with a dilemma. Since 1914 they had called for American neutrality and some, such as Devoy and Cohalan, had been vocal in their desire for a German victory. Now the United States was at war with Germany and allied with Britain, the traditional enemy of radical Irish-American nationalists. How should they react to this new situation?

As part of its efforts to gain acceptance in the United States, Irish-America had traditionally sought to demonstrate loyalty to the American flag through willing service in the American military. The term “Fighting Irish” (which Taoiseach Enda Kenny recently referred in his 2017 St. Patrick’s Day speech at the White House) can be linked to this ongoing tradition in Irish-American history. Mindful of this tradition and wary of accusations of disloyalty in what became a feverish war-time atmosphere, the Clan sent a circular to its members stating: ‘We will remain loyal and will yield to none in devotion to the flag.” In an interview on the 21st April with the Catholic newspaper, the Brooklyn Tablet, Cohalan also declared that Irish-Americans would always be “present in defense of the flag and support of American institutions.”

While the Irish enlisted or were drafted into regiments throughout the United States, the New York-based ‘Fighting 69th’ became the most clearly identified Irish regiment. The regiment served with distinction on the Western Front and became immortalized in the film “The Fighting 69th” (1940) directed by William Keighley and starring James Cagney.

Irish-American service in the war later featured prominently in FOIF publicity material for an Irish “Victory Fund” to aid the Irish nationalist cause. One 1919 poster urged Americans to: “Remember what you owe to Ireland. As you honor the Irish blood shed for American liberty help the cause of liberty now.” Not for the last time would Irish-American sacrifice in America’s wars be enlisted in support of the Irish nation.

Michael Doorley is associate lecturer in history and international relations with the Open University in Ireland. He is the author of “Irish American Diaspora Nationalism: The Friends of Irish Freedom 1916-1935” and is currently at work on a biography of Judge Daniel Colohan. Doorley will speak on the Irish-American response to events in 1917 on Monday evening, April 24, as part of St. Paul Irish Arts Week. For more about the week’s events visit www.irishfair.com.

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