Captain George Berkeley Descriptive List (Ref. PR12)

PR12/

‘sick of this playing at soldiers in this awful crisis…why don’t the Volunteers…enlist in K’s ( Kitch ner’s) army…’.

2pp

44(a) 14 September 1914

Letter, from Hervey de Montmorency (b1868 – d1942) [former Inspector or Commander, Wicklow Brigade, Irish Volunteers], Ballybrack, Co. Dublin. He is sorry he cannot take over the Belfast Volunteers, ‘it is quite out of the question’. He is joining the Dublin Fusiliers as a Captain and hopes to be sent to the front. He is ‘utterly sick’ of the Volunteers, who have no officers and submit to a ‘contemptible crew of leaders’. Money is spent paying the expenses of ‘crazy creatures’ who make ‘bloodthirsty speeches’. The Volunteers missed the ‘grea test opportunity’ when they failed to back up John Redmond’s speech. He shudders to think what Home Rule means under the leadership of McNeill and O’Rahilly. Concludes, ‘it is better to be a captain in the British army than a Field Marshal in the Irish Volunteers ’.

4pp

44(b) 14 June 1916

Note, from Thomas A. Motion, 1 st Warwickshire Yeomanry, Wrotham, Kent, to George Berkeley, Oxfordshire. He has received his letter and is writing to Colonel Beech.

44(c) 18 October 1916

Letter, from Alice S. Green, 36 Grosvenor Road, Westminster , London, to ‘My dear Captain Berkeley’. Concerns ‘the publications’. She notes that 2 of the ‘very best workers in Irish Mr. Flower and Mr. O’Rahilly…could…organise anything’. Mentions Mr. O’Rahilly app lying for the Irish Chair at Cork.

From Alec and Anne Lawrence

4 July 1914

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