Military Rule in Ireland by Erskine Childers first edition 1920 a fine copy

Childers, Erskine (1870-1922). Military Rule in Ireland. Dublin: The Talbot Press Limited, 1920.

First edition. Octavo. 48 pp. Original pictorial wrappers, stapled as issued, with a photographic illustration of a tank raid in Aungier Street, Dublin, on 20 February 1920. Photographic frontispiece depicting the arrest of Irish Members of Parliament. Edges unevenly trimmed as issued, with a few leaves unopened. A fine, exceptionally fresh copy.

An indictment of British military government during the Irish War of Independence, collecting eight articles contributed to the Daily News between March and May 1920, with corrections, explanatory notes and an additional chapter. Drawing on investigated accounts of raids, arrests, destruction and looting, Childers argues that military repression constitutes war against a civilian population. His opening invokes his own experience as a soldier and his respect for the conventions of warfare.

Best known as the author of The Riddle of the Sands, Childers served Britain in the Boer War and First World War before becoming a committed Irish republican. He helped bring arms into Howth aboard his yacht Asgard in 1914 and later served as secretary to the Irish delegation during the Anglo-Irish Treaty negotiations. Opposing the Treaty, he subsequently supported the republican side in the Civil War and was executed by the Irish Free State in November 1922.