THE NEW YORK HERALD

New York City, New York, U.S.A.

18 July 1915

(page 9)

Extra! Irish Republic Declares

War on England Despite Police

Shooed from Bedloe’s Island, Revolutionary

Committee Takes Fateful Step on Board Motor Boat

What Sergeant O’Leary is going to do with that Victoria Cross and the feelings of tens of thousands of other Irishmen in the trenches of the Allies have been totally ignored by the Secret Revolutionary Committee of Public Safety of the Provisional Government of the Irish Republic, which has gone and pronounced the independence of Ireland and declared war on England. Just like that. Right here in New York. It was something like old times in one respect. The police wouldn’t let ’em.

The Secret Committee wanted to land on Governor’s Island at half-past four in the morning, but had to be content to raise the Irish banner on board a motor boat some one had loaned it and read the declaration of Irish independence to the fishes.

“By the mouth of our trusty and well beloved delegate and spokesman, Brother Aleister Crowley, No. 418,” the committee announced, “All men and women are created unequal.” To stop all that the committee then mutually pledged the lives, the fortunes and the sacred honor of everybody on board the motor boat and declared war on England.

Breakfast at Jack’s followed the ceremonies, which included Irish jigs played on a fiddle by Miss Leila Waddell as the motor boat sped up the Hudson. Men on board the German steamships at the Hoboken docks, the British of the Cunard and French sailors cheered the motor boat and its green flag with the gold harp. On board, besides Mr. Crowley and Miss Waddell, were J. Dorr and Patrick Gilroy.

Twenty-eight minutes of five on the morning of July 3 was chosen as the time for the ceremony by Mr. Crowley, who is a poet and astrologer, as well as the Thomas Jefferson of the Irish Republic. He discovered that at that hour the Bull would be in the ascendant and the Lion on the fritz, the serpent asleep and every shamrock In the sky adorned with a patch of praties and a pig.

Having arranged with the planets and everybody but the policeman on Bedloe Island, who shooed the motor boat and its passengers away with coarse language, Mr. Crowley tore up his English passport and tossed the fragments on the early morning rush from the sewers through the bay.

“To endure oppression with meekness is the pride and prerogative of God. It is not for man to usurp it,” was one of the phrases calculated to touch true Irish hearts.

There is just one word of hope for England. “We hereby declare war,” the declaration reads, but it is not forever. This limit is set in the words “until such time as our demand being granted, our rights recognized and our power firmly established in our own country, from which we are exiled, we may see fit to restore to her the blessings of peace and to extend to her the privilege of friendship.”

The committee explains that Ireland in declaring was on England has not adopted Germany for friend.