Free I Signed My Death Warrant by Ryle T. Dwyer

plenipotentiaries or they tied them up,’ he continued according to the official report. ‘If they tied them up they would get no one to go.’
    â€˜They would have to do the best they could for the country and they could not do that if they tied up the hands of their plenipotentiaries,’ he repeated later. ‘He would oppose it to the extent of resigning.’ He said that all the members of the delegation would have to be ratified by the Dáil. Liam de Róiste formally proposed and Pádraig Ó Máille seconded a motion that the Speaker put to the floor:

    ... that if plenipotentiaries for negotiation be appointed either by the Cabinet or the Dáil, such plenipotentiaries be given a free hand in such negotiations and duly to report to the Dáil.

    The motion was passed unanimously.
    De Valera stunned his cabinet colleagues with his announce­ment that he did not intend to take part in the conference with the British. He suggested Arthur Griffith to lead the delegation, with Michael Collins as his back up.
    Griffith, who founded Sinn Féin, was born in 1872, He also established the United Irishman newspaper, which he used to promote the idea that Irish members of parliament should withdraw from Westminster and set up their own assembly in Dublin. He advocated the creation of a dual monarchy between Britain and Ireland on Austro-Hungarian lines, so he was not a republican, and he did not believe in the use of physical force. He took no part in the Easter Rebellion, but the British jailed him anyway. He stepped down as leader of Sinn Féin to allow de Valera become president of party in 1917. Griffith was promptly elected vice president, and he took over the acting leadership of the party and the movement when de Valera went to the United States in 1919.
    The president wished for Collins to accompany Griffith. They had worked well together in the Dáil, but Collins initially refused to go. ‘I was somewhat surprised at his reluctance for he had been rather annoyed with me for not bringing him on the team when I went to meet Lloyd George earlier on in July,’ de Valera wrote. ‘I now considered it essential that he should be on the team with Griffith.
    â€˜They by themselves alone, it seemed, would form a well balanced team,’ the president continued. ‘Griffith would, I thought, have the confidence of the “moderates” and Collins that of the IRB and the Army.’ He added that ‘with these two as the leaders no one could suggest that the delegation was not a strong and representative one.’
    Collins did not want to be a part of the delegation, especially when de Valera was staying at home, but he was urged to go by his friend Harry Boland. He and Boland discussed the whole thing for hours at de Valera’s home on the night of 30 August.
    â€˜For three hours one night, after the decision had been made to send a delegation to London, I pleaded with de Valera to leave me at home and let some other man take my place as a negotiator,’ Collins recalled. ‘The point I tried to impress on de Valera was, that for several years (rightly or wrongly makes no difference) - the English had held me to be the one man most necessary to capture because they held me to be the one man responsible for the smashing of their Secret Service organisation, and for their failure to terrorise the Irish people with their Black-and-Tans.’ It really did not matter whether the legend was true, or was simply the product of press sensationalism. ‘The important fact,’ he emphasised, ‘was that in England, as in Ireland, the Michael Collins legend existed. It pictured me as the mysterious active menace, elusive, unknown, unaccountable, and in this respect I was the only living Irishman of whom it could be said.’
    In effect, Collins was arguing that he was seen as the real leader; so he would be in a better position to influence republicans to