The Men in Black
By BRIAN INGLIS
COLONEL HIS HIGHNESS REAMMON MOLTON SEAGHAN, The O'Brien, Prince of the Dalcassians of Thomond and Pogla, LL.B. (cum laude), K.M., Ph.D., M.D., 14th Count of Thomond, 13th Baron Ibracken, Hereditary Protector of the Aran Islands, Knight of the Collar of Gold (vide Should Erin Remember), Member of the Royal Geo- graphical Society of Edinburgh, Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Crown of Charlemagne, &c., was last in the news when the announcement of the birth of a daughter and heiress appeared in the Dublin Evening Mail and in A Spectator's Notebook. He has now, to the general delight, reappeared in public life. .
A few days ago Dublin citizens on the way to their offices were confronted by a new poster stuck on to walls and lamp- posts, among the injunctions to eject the English army of occupa- tion from the North and the English Sunday newspapers from the South. The latest poster opened a recruiting campaign for yet another private army to act as. the bulwark (the last acted as the vanguard) of a new Christian Nationalist Party. The army's aims, however, were not distinguishable from its predeces- sor's—a determination to make war on Bolshevicism (sic) and Basil Brooke. Only the shirt front was changed, the new colour being indicated in the army's designation as "The Black Legion." To judge by the manifesto, the title derived in equal parts from Mussolini and from " Sapper." Behind this new force, acting as its Director of Political Education and Culture, stands the Prince of Thomond.
The Principality of Thomond has no more 'historical basis than the claim of its ruler to be descended from Brian Boru ; but that it nevertheless exists is manifest from the wealth of docu- mentary evidence accumulated by His Highness in support of his claims, attested by international figures of the standing of the Estonian and Latvian Consuls in Dublin, Messrs. John MacEvoy and Peter McCarthy. If Thomond's independence is not recog- nised by the Government of Southern Ireland, neither—as His Highness is quick to point out—is the independence of the Six Counties. The fact that neither principality nor prince is recog- nised by the Genealogical Office in Dublin, which has unkindly suggested that His Highness has no authority for his title, " beyond his own whim," can easily be disposed of by pointing out that the Genealogical Office is the bastard offspring of British! misrule, and has no right to exist in the Republic.
Stories about this remarkable Defender of Hereditary Right are, of course, numerous, and some of them may even be true. The best must surely be apocryphal, but nothing has done more to raise the Prince in the esteem of the public, always delighted to hear of a man who can put it across the Law. The story runs that a citizen—let us call him O'Dea—once wrote to the Press to denounce the Prince as a fraud. An action immediately followed for libel. When it came up before the court, it was announced that the two disputants had agreed to arbitration. The court expressed its satisfaction. In due course the arbitrator gave his decision, in the Prince's favour. Not until some time later did the fact emerge that both Mr. O'Dea and the arbitrator were creations of the Prince's mind and pen. The Prince is not the leader of the new Party ; that post is held, by a Dublin taxi-driver. The reason may be sought in the Prince's belief that Ireland is a republic only by reaction against an alien Crown. Deep down, he thinks, she has monarchist leanings, and, should she wake up to the fact, she would not have to look far afield for her Royal Family. (The Prince has been married three times, and has children by two of the marriages.) An occasional old-world flavour in the party manifesto suggests that he must nevertheless have had the guiding hand in its com- position. In particular, there is the denunciation of those of us who have " become lost in the mire of total materialism and self. indulgence in the countless pleasures offered to us by a race alien to us in religion and culture, who by subtle design to dull our senses and obliterate our national pride." Capital letters are scattered in the prodigal style of two centuries ago ; Ireland is referred to as a " Fatherland," a breach with the Kathleen nt Houlihan tradition occasioned presumably by the new move-1 ment's bias against feminine equality ; and it is so long since the word Bolshevism was current that it is hardly surprising it is misspelt. "The Black Legion" and the new party follow the traditional Fascist pattern. Obedience to orders is a primary qualification ;, national military service for all males is threatened ; member. ship is confined to men of Irish blood. The existence of such bodies—there have been one or two earlier efforts along similar lines—may appear to be odd grounds for satisfaction, but the feeling exists in Ireland that toleration given to unpleasant excrescences on the body politic is a reflection of fundamental stability. It is better, the stock argument runs, to laugh such organisations out of existence than to suppress them. The Irisfli Republican Army was an exception, because it stemmed front the war of independence, and consequently had tougher roots: The Blueshirts of the '30s, too, had State action taken against them, but the argument still continues whether they were not itt any case falling at the time 'that they were pushed. These private organisations, however menacing they may look to a generation nourished on tales of Mussolini and Hitler, hay justified the State's confidence by collapsing, usually in comedy,, Even the I.R.A. went by this exit ; the citizens of a respectable Dublin suburb were astonished to see the former Republican leader, who had just managed to escape from incarceration by his comrades, appearing on their streets unshaven and loaded with chains. The Blueshirts fizzled out in an inglorious episode by Franco's side in Spain: and, more recently, Captain Cowan's army of invasion of the North quietly disintegrated before the public laughter. It is, of course, unwise to rely upon ridicule entirely, as the example of Hitler showed. But it has worked so far.
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