Address to Court Martial, Statement
written in Kilmainham, 2 May, 1916
The
following is the substance of what I said when asked today by the
President of
the Court Martial at Richmond Barracks whether I had anything to say in
defence:
I
desire in the first place to repeat what I have already said in letters
to
General Sir John Maxwell and to Brigadier General Lowe. My object in
agreeing
to an unconditional surrender was to prevent the further slaughter of
the civil
population of Dublin and to save the lives of our gallant followers
who, having
made for six days a stand unparalleled in military history, were now
surrounded
and (in the case of those under the immediate command of Headquarters)
without
food. I fully understand now, as then, that my own life is forfeit to
British
law, and I shall die very cheerfully if I think that the British
Government, as
it has already shown itself strong, will now show itself magnanimous
enough to
accept my single life to forfeiture and give a general amnesty to the
brave men
and boys who have fought at my bidding.
In
the second place I wish it to be understood that any admissions I make
here are
to be taken as involving myself alone. They do not involve and must not
be used
against anyone who acted with me, not even those who may have set their
names
to documents with me. (The Court assented to this)
I
admit that I was Commandant General Commanding in Chief the forces of
the Irish Republic which have been acting against you for the
past week,
and that I was President of their Provisional Government. I stand over
all my
acts and words done or spoken in those capacities. When I was a child
of ten I
went down on my bare knees by my bedside one night and promised God
that I
should devote my life to an effort to free my country. I have kept that
promise. As a boy and as a man I have worked for Irish freedom, first
among all
earthly things, I have helped to organise, to arm, to train, and to
discipline
my fellow-countrymen to the sole end that, when the time came, they
might fight
for Irish freedom. The time, as it seemed to me, did come, and we went
into the
fight. I am glad we did. We seem to have lost. We have not lost. To
refuse to
fight would have been to lose; to fight is to win. We have kept faith
with the
past, and handed on a tradition to the future.
I
repudiate the assertion of the prosecutor that I sought to aid and abet
England's enemy. Germany is no more to me than England is. I asked and accepted German aid in the
shape of
arms and an expeditionary force. We neither asked for nor accepted
German gold,
nor had any traffic with Germany but what I state. My aim was to win Irish
freedom: we
struck the first blow ourselves but should have been glad of an ally's
aid.
I
assume that I am speaking to Englishmen, who value their freedom and
who
profess to be fighting for the freedom of Belgium and Serbia. Believe that we, too, love freedom and
desire it. To
us it is more desirable than anything in the world. If you strike us
down now,
we shall rise again and renew the fight. You cannot conquer Ireland. You cannot extinguish the Irish passion for
freedom.
If our deed has not been sufficient to win freedom, then our children
will win it
by a better deed.
