The issue on Saturday morning of the Lord Lieutenant╒s proclamation announcing drastic measures to put down a treasonable conspiracy in Ireland with German enemies has been accompanied by a number of arrests in various parts of Ireland. The arrests began on Friday night.
The prisoners include Mr. De Valera and other Sinn Fein members of Parliament, nearly the whole of the Sinn Fein Executive, and many local leaders of Sinn Fein and the Irish Volunteers. Seventy-three (according to one account 46) were conveyed from Kingstown to Holyhead on Saturday evening in a naval boat.
There has been no disturbance of order.
SHIPPED TO ENGLAND.
(From our Special Correspondent).
All the prisoners were taken down to Kingstown in armoured motor-cars and put on board a navy boat. New arrivals dribbled on from the country during the day, and at six o╒clock last night the boat left, presumably for England, with 73 prisoners on board, speeded with the cheers of a large crowd who had been watching it all day. At the time of writing some of the men for whom warrants are out have not been found, and I think the full round-up may be put roughly at a hundred.
During the day the military completed the work by raiding the Sinn Fein headquarters in Harcourt Street and removing all the papers. After they had gone a placid caretaker put up the placard, ╥Business as usual.╙
The Castle and the Plot.
In manner and method the job has been done quietly and efficiently. The policy is another matter, on which one had perhaps better reserve judgment until the Government produce their proofs, though I am afraid that it is not by any means the present disposition of the great majority of people here.
According to the Castle, whose view I give on the highest and most direct authority, this is not in any sense a move to suppress Sinn Fein, although, as I have pointed out, all its leaders have been arrested. It has nothing to do with any speeches made in Ireland or with any internal propaganda, however seditious. It has solely to do with a German intrigue, of which the Castle says it has knowledge, and the explicit inference is that all the hundred or so people who have been arrested are implicated.
A clear distinction has to be drawn between the anti-British feeling here, which is almost universal, and pro-Germanism, which I should say is very rare. Sinn Fein itself is not professedly pro-German, but from their previous records it is within the range of credibility that some of the prisoners may have been in communication with the enemy. Many of them took part in the insurrection of 1916, where German assistance was proved and indeed admitted. It is believed by perfectly rational people, in full sympathy with Nationalism, that German secret service money may have come into Ireland through America to feed insurrection.
But as to the existence of so widespread a conspiracy, public opinion on the Nationalist side is frankly sceptical. If the Government have proofs, which they say they have, the regular course would be to lay indictments for treason and prove it. But no charge has been made at all. The prisoners have simply been arrested under the detention powers of the Defence Regulations, which do not require any form of trial, and I do not think that any trial is contemplated.
