FROM THE ARCHIVES:The substantive public debate on the Treaty began in the Dáil in Earlsfort Terrace on December 19th, 1921. These pen pictures of the main participants were part of an atmospheric report by an anonymous Special Correspondent, probably Bertie Smyllie, on the event.
MR GRIFFITH rose to propose the ratification of the Treaty. He is not an orator, although he has a good voice, and knows how to make his points with skill. His attitude in speaking is slightly aggressive. He speaks in jerks, arms akimbo, hands thrust deep in trousers pockets. His jaw juts out as he jabs home a telling blow, and no trace of embarrassment mars his confidence. His speech was not very brilliant, but it was thoroughly sound.
Mr de Valera was full of fight and fire. His first gesture was one of passion, and throughout his long speech he sustained a note of fierce enthusiasm.
Standing with his body slightly bent, he poured withering scorn on the ignoble document. His voice rose to a high pitch of anger, falling at times to a deeper note of despair. It was a good speech in its way, but it was a tragic speech. Mr de Valera was attempting the impossible, and all his rhetoric could not disguise the fact even from himself.
Mr de Valera worked himself up into a fury, and his eloquence became so torrential that he often had to pause in order to overtake his words. He finished as pale as a sheet, thoroughly exhausted, and the applause of his vociferous supporters had not yet died away when he left the room to attend a meeting of Convocation of the National University.
The session provided a curious contrast in personalities. Mr Michael Collins and Mr Erskine Childers were the principal speakers, the Irishman on the side of Mr Griffith, and the Englishman in favour of Mr de Valera.
The contrast between the two men was strongly marked in their speeches. Mr Collins was passionate, forcible, and at times almost theatrical. He spoke some sound sense but did not hesitate to lay stress on the ego when the occasion demanded. Mr Childers was cold, expressionless, a typical Anglo-Saxon; but his speech was closely reasoned, whereas that of the Celt derived its chief strength from its fire.
The driving force behind Mr Collins’s long speech was his own character, which he tried to impress upon the minds of his listeners. He got just the right amount of humour into his remarks – one of his sallies made even Mr de Valera laugh – and when he finished on a note of passionate appeal the hall rang with applause.
After Mr Collins’s passion the suavity of Mr Childers seemed rather out of place. One might have been in Westminster. Nevertheless the man who wrote The Riddle of the Sands is a formidable opponent in an argument, and Mr Childers’s doctrinaire objections to the Treaty were presented in an effective way. It was strange to hear an Englishman speak as he spoke, but we are living in strange times.
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