Irish Military Elites, Nation and Empire, 1870–1925 by Loughlin Sweeney

Author:Loughlin Sweeney
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030193072
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Military Institutions and Irish Society in 1914

While the military establishment in Ireland was preoccupied in the years before the First World War by the Home Rule issue, certain officers were eagerly anticipating the possibility of conflict on the Continent: Sir John French , when appointed CIGS in 1912, announced his intention to get the British Army ‘ready for war’.33 General F.P. Crozier recalls in his memoirs ‘the inevitable breakfast salutation of Lord Charles Beresford, R.N., since 1911: “Good-morning all; one day nearer to the German war!”’34 However, according to Edward Spiers, such pronouncements ‘evoked little interest in the press and Parliament. A civil war in Ulster still seemed more imminent than a major war in Europe’, even after the murder of Archduke Ferdinand.35

For Irish officers in the overseas empire, life continued apace, without much sign that a global war was in the offing. In a faraway Indian cantonment, Captain William Kemmis was preparing to return to his family home in Ballinacor, County Wicklow for a long-awaited period of leave after four years in India. The privilege of seeing home was a rare one: in a letter to his parents, he predicted that ‘the Regt should be home about 1919 not earlier’.36 His leave was cut short after only a few short days, and much to his surprise his regiment of dragoons was mobilised in August for the Western Front. Kemmis did indeed serve with his regiment until 1919—but it was the calamitous Indian sacrifices at Neuve-Chapelle, rather than the pleasant sporting life of the United Provinces that awaited him as he left Ballinacor, brimming with confidence and a spirit of adventure.

How, one wonders, was the Irish officer corps in 1914 able to retain a façade of normality and confidence, swan-like, while under the surface thrashing about with rumours of civil war and apprehensions of imperial decline, right up until the outbreak of war? Key to its sense of security was the seeming strength of its traditional institutions. In the aftermath of the Curragh incident, and Hubert Gough and Henry Wilson could claim a victory for unionist officers and the elite institutions of the traditional officer establishment.37 Evincing particular robustness in 1914 was the venerable Kildare Street Club, the predominant locus of interaction between military officers and the Irish landed interest. Indeed, the proportion of club members with a military connection had been rising since 1860—evidence of the enduring connection between the officer corps and the army, particularly as many of the 1860 members were still there in 1914!38

R.B. McDowell, the historian of the Kildare Street and University Clubs, found the number of military members to be ‘a remarkable feature of the club’: in 1914 ‘over 230 members were serving or retired army officers and five others were members of the Royal Navy or Marines, the total amounting to just over one third of membership (34.8 per cent)’. This doesn’t include the 103 members with connections to yeomanry, militia and territorial regiments, which brings half the membership of the club into the circle of the Irish military establishment.

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