Robert Erskine Childers

Robert Erskine Childers

Robert Erskine Childers (25 June 1870 – 24 November 1922) was an author, Royal Navy intelligence officer and Irish revolutionary. Childers is known primarily for his sailing driven espionage classic, The Riddle Of The Sands (1903). He was of anglo-irish stock, and at the end of his life chose to join the fight for Irish Independence with tactically written propaganda & politics. He wrote several military books, and lots of editorial work for newspapers.

Literary Years and War (1900-1918)

• Most of England's wit and manhood scintillated in the sunlight, while British matrons and England's fairest maids lit up with looks of proud affection; bosoms heaved in sympathetic unison with the measured tramp of the ammunition boots....
  • "In the Ranks of the C.I.V." By Erskine Childers, Smith & Elder and Co. (London, 1901), p. 20.

• One of the charms of Africa, is the long settled periods of pure unclouded sky, in which the sun rises and sets with no flaming splashes of vivid colours, but by gentle, imperceptible gradations of pure light, waning or waxing.
  • "In the Ranks of the C.I.V.", by Erskine Childers, Smith & Elder and Co. (London, 1901), p. 127.

• Everything had been new and strange : the lean and ragged foot-soldiers who marched alongside of us, toughened, stained and blasés after months of service; the turmoil of encampment in the dark, with the shrill yells of black drivers, and the hassle and crush of crowding wagons, the twinkle of hosts of camp-fires, and the hot glow of a distant veldt-fire; and, finally the ghostly ride of two miles to water the horses....
  • "The H.A.C. in South Africa", by Erskine Childers and Basil Williams, Smith & Elder, (London, 1903), p. 72.

• An artillery man is not made in a month, nor an officer in a year; and unless we had had educated men as keen as mustard, and no trouble about discipline, I doubt if the battery in South Africa would have been much good for a long time.
  • "The H.A.C. in South Africa", by Erskine Childers and Basil Williams, Smith & Elder, (London, 1903), p. 193.

• First let us rid our minds of the fallacy that guerrilla war is a wholly distinct thing in kind from regular war. It is nothing of the sort. War is a science whose fundamental principles are constant however wide or numerous the variations....
  • "War and the Arme Blanche", by Erskine Childers, Edward Arnold, (London, 1910), p. 231.

• The cavalryman, is for practical purposes a compound of three factors; man, horse and rifle. The lance should go altogether.
  • "German Influence on British Cavalry", by Erskine Childers, Edward Arnold, (London, 1911), p. 215.

• Being shot with volcanic suddenness into the Navy at an hour's notice is a queer experience, but I am beginning to get used to the life and to forget that I ever had a moustache or a tweed suit.
  • Written aboard HMS Engadine in 1914, cited in " The Riddle Of Erskine Childers " By Andrew Boyle, Hutchinson, London, (1977), pg. 200

• I leapt into my boots, trousers and jacket, tumbled all my gear, lying ready laid out, into my bag, donned helmet and goggles, seized charts and rushed to the upper deck....the sea was calm under a heaving swell. Engadine towered above my cockle-shell.
  • "Written aboard HMS Engadine in 1916, cited in " The Riddle Of Erskine Childers " By Andrew Boyle , Hutchinson, London, (1977), pg. 205

The Riddle Of The Sands (1903)

The Riddle Of The Sands, by Erskine Childers, Smith & Elder and Co. (London, 1903).

• ...to feel oneself a martyr, as everybody knows, is a pleasurable thing...
  • p. 1.

• ...the Dulcibella had begun to move in her sleep, as it were, rolling drowsily to some faint send of the sea, with an occasional short jump, like the start of an uneasy dreamer.
  • p. 35.

• It was devotion to the sea, wedded to a fire of pent-up patriotism struggling incessantly for an outlet in strenuous physical expression; a humanity, born of acute sensitiveness to his own limitations, only adding fuel to the flame.
  • p. 91.

• What the devil do you mean Carruthers?
  • p. 154.

• Juist, by jove!
  • p. 192.

• A keen wind from the west struck our faces, and as swiftly as it had come the fog rolled away from us, in one mighty mass, stripping clean and pure the starry dome of heaven....
  • p. 217.

• Drunk with triumph, I cuddled in my rocking cradle and ransacked every unvisited chamber of the memory....to see the residue take life and meaning in the light of the great revelation.
  • p. 276.

Last Years: Ireland (1919-1922)

• This Irish war, small as it may seem now, will, if it is persisted in, corrupt and eventually ruin not only your army, but your Empire itself. What right has England to torment and demoralise Ireland?
  • The Daily News, 1919, as cited in "The Riddle of Erskine Childers" By Andrew Boyle, Hutchinson, London, (1977), pg. 260

• And here again, what does the King mean? The functions of a King as an individual, are very small indeed. What the King means, is the British Government, and let there be no mistake, under the terms of this Treaty the British Government will be supreme in Ireland.

• Parnell once said that no man has the right to set a boundary to the onward march of a nation. Parnell was right. Parnell spoke in a moment when Ireland was still in a subordinate position in the British Empire. Since that time, Ireland has taken a step from which she can never withdraw by declaring her independence. This Treaty is a step backwards. And I, for my part, would be inclined to say that he would be a bold man, who would dare set a boundary to the backward march of a nation, which, of its own free will, had deliberately relinquished its own independence.
  • Both above from a speech regarding the Anglo-Irish Treaty (1921) given on 21 Decemeber 1921 at University College Dublin. Cited in "Great Irish Speeches" by Michael McLoughlin, Poolbeg, London (1997), pp. 103-107.

• The British can sign and find a way to repudiate their signatures. They've done it over and over again. You need to go back to the Treaty Of Limerick. You have Malta and Egypt, for instance. They can always find high moral reasons for such repudiation. They are opportunists. Griffith, however, having given his word, would stick to it whatever the consequences, even though it meant the disaster of a civil war. They knew that.
  • Taken from a 1922, conversation between Childers and Brennan in regards to Arthur Griffith's decision to sign the Anglo-Irish Treaty (1921), cited in "Allegiance" by Robert Brennan, Browne & Nolan, Dublin (1950), pp. 254-55.

• ....death stills the bitterest controversy.
  • In conversation with Desmond Ryan, cited in "Unique Dictator" by Desmond Ryan, Arthur Barker Limited, London (1936), p. 213.

• I am a birth, domicile, and deliberate choice of citizenship an Irishman...
  • His own words from his last military trial on 17 November 1922, cited in The Freeman's Journal Newspaper, 27 November 1922.