September 24 1924
Two northern cabinet ministers displayed themselves to the spiritless and wearied audience at Enniskillen yesterday; but the most important personage on the platform was an Englishman.
No particulars about him or his “career” can be traced. He was utterly unknown until he managed to get to Westminster last year as a Tory MP for Worcestershire: and his name is William Pomeroy Crawford Greene.
This Mr WPC Greene wandered with Lord Curzon, Dr Haden Guest and 19 other Britons around the border; then he went to Dublin, listened to several speeches, dined (or lunched?) with the Governor-General, probably motored to Glendalough, and finally had an interview with President Cosgrave.
Another English tourist, one of the Liberal MPs said in England on his return home that: “Mr Cosgrave, asked if he and his government would agree to the findings of a Boundary Commission, whatever they might be, replied that they were willing to abide by the decision of the commission”.
That was a frank and explicit statement; it should help materially to “clear the air”. But the Tory from Worcester came to Enniskillen from Dublin and delivered a harangue so venomous, provocative and inflammatory that the brace of cabinet ministers who sat still and listened to him will find no believers in their sincerity henceforward if they profess a desire to see the restoration of harmony and the maintenance of peace amongst Irishmen.
Not even the Twelfth of July speech of Lord Carson which inspired the shipyards’ pogrom in 1920 and laid the foundation of two years’ horrors in Belfast was a more mischievous and malignant utterance than the frenzied shrieking about arms, and fighting, and bloodshed, and civil war that fell from the lips of this strange incendiary yesterday in the presence of Mr JM Andrews and Mr EM Archdale.
Was it lack of moral courage or positive agreement with the unknown firebrand from the English county that kept the cabinet ministers silent while he spoke?
No Irish nationalist – not even the most irresponsible and foolish “extremist” – has talked of or contemplated “war” or the use of force against fellow-countrymen in connection with the British Government’s direct responsibility for putting Treaty Article XII into operation.
Irish News editorial condemning a speech at a loyalist demonstration in Enniskillen by Tory MP WPC Greene, who claimed “there will be many Englishmen whose arms and bodies will be at your [Ulster unionists’] service, and who will help you financially as well as in the field” over the boundary question.
