John Devoy - Secret War

Secret War

Devoy's fundraising efforts and work to sway Irish-Americans to support physical force nationalism in World War I included attempts to assist the Easter Rising in 1916. In 1914, Padraig Pearse visited the elderly Devoy in America, and later the same year Roger Casement worked with Devoy in raising money for guns to arm the Irish Volunteers.

At the declaration of war between Britain and Germany on August 14, 1914, Sir Roger Casement and John Devoy arranged a meeting in New York between the Western Hemisphere’s top-ranking German diplomat, Count von Bernstorff, and a delegation of Clan-na-Gael men. The Clan delegates proposed a mutually beneficial plan: if Germany would sell guns to the Irish rebels and provide military leaders, the rebels would stage a revolt against Britain, diverting troops and attention from the war with Germany. Von Bernstorff listened with evident sympathy and promised to relay the proposal to Berlin. Devoy decided to communicate directly with Berlin himself . At the time, Britain held control of the seas and furthermore, within days of the start of the war, had cut the transatlantic cable. It would be necessary to send an envoy to deliver the message personally.

John Kenny, president of the New York Clan-na-Gael, was sent. After meeting the German ambassador in Rome and personally presenting Devoy's plan, Kenny met in Germany with Count von Bulow. He then traveled to Dublin where he told Tom Clarke and other members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood of the arrangement, and carried back to Devoy the I.R.B.'s wishlist for guns, money, and military leaders. The details of Kenny's mission were later published in the Gaelic American.

Though he was skeptical of the endeavor, Devoy financed and supported Casement's expedition to Germany to enlist German aid in the struggle to free Ireland from British rule, including Casement's "Irish Brigade". Nervous of Casement's companion Adler Christensen whom he discovered was a fraudster and his decision to put the Irish Brigade at the Germans' disposal in Turkey, Devoy advised Casement to return to the USA, advice which was ignored.

In 1916 he played an important role in the formation of the Clan-dominated Friends of Irish Freedom at the third Irish Race Convention, a propaganda organization whose membership totaled at one point 275,000. The Friends supported Woodrow Wilson for the presidency in 1916 because of his policy of American neutrality in the world war. Fearful of accusations of disloyalty for their cooperation with Germans and opposition to the United States' entering the war on the side of Great Britain, the Friends significantly lowered their profile after April 1917 when America entered the war.

With the end of the war, Devoy played a key role in the Friends' advocacy for self-determination for Ireland, in line with Wilson's "Fourteen Points", as distinct from recognition by the United States of the sovereignty of the new Irish Republic. Wilson did not guarantee recognition of the Republic as declared in 1916 and reaffirmed in the popular election in 1918. American-Irish republicans challenged the Friends' refusal to campaign for American recognition of the Irish Republic. Not surprisingly, Devoy and the Friends' Daniel F. Cohalan became the key players in a trans-Atlantic dispute with de facto Irish president Éamon de Valera, touring the United States in 1919 and 1920 in hopes of gaining U.S. recognition of the Republic and American funds. Believing that the Americans should follow Irish policy, de Valera formed the American Association for the Recognition of the Irish Republic in 1920 with help from the Philadelphia Clan na Gael. Diplomatic recognition was not forthcoming and Irish-American groups refused to support Wilson in the United States presidential election, 1920, but $5.5m was raised.