OUR TRADITIONNo nation has a greater tradition of guerrilla warfare than Ireland. Our history is full of examples of its successful use. We have produced some fine guerrilla leaders whose true qualities have never been fully assessed.Their strength lay in the support they received from the Irish people. In the final analysis it was the people who bore the enemy's reprisals. Whoever betrayed the cause, or gave up the fight, or suffered loss of spirit, it was seldom the people.KERNE OF OLDThe kerne of old were lightly armed foot soldiers. Their tactics were of the skirmishing kind. They harassed the Normans. In open or positional warfare they had no hope of breaching the defences of the strongly-armed, iron-clad Normans.Art Og MacMorrough Kavanagh was a typical guerrilla leader of his period. Richard II of England came twice with large armies to subdue him (1394 and 1399) and never succeeded. Another was Fiach MacHugh O'Byrne and yet a third Leinster leader was Rory O'More. The O'Byrne's great victory at Glenmalure followed the strict application of guerrilla tactics.Ulster produced its quota of which Shane (the Proud) O'Neill was only one. The English leader Sydney paid him a fine tribute when he said: "He armeth and weaponeth all the peasants of his country, the first that ever did so of an Irishman." But it was left to the finest military leader Irish history has produced, Hugh (the Great) O'Neill, to understand fully the potentialities of guerrilla warfare. He proved it too for 9 years.But guerrilla operations which made this great success possible had to have a united people behind them. British Government in Ireland no longer existed in fact. British terror in Ireland could not hope to revive it. And terror had come as a last resort but one. The final one was to split the people.The hammer blows of the guerrillas destroyed the British administration. The guerrillas acted in small numbers in the right localities and compelled the British to disperse to find them. Then as they searched they hit them at will by means of the ambush. Communications were systematically destroyed and even the British army's transport system in the country was disorganised.The enemy's intelligence service was completely dislocated. The R.I.C.-the eyes and ears of British rule-was demoralised. British justice courts could not operate-for the people ignored them.The British gradually were forced to evacuate the smaller more isolated garrisons. They concentrated in the larger towns. The areas evacuated came under sole control of The Republic. The next step was to isolate the larger centres and keep cutting communications and constantly hitting the enemy. In time these would have been evacuated too. Thus ended the last great phase of guerrilla operations against British rule in Ireland.WHAT IS GUERRILLA WARFARE?A small nation fighting for freedom can only hope to defeat an oppressor or occupying power by means of guerrilla warfare. The enemy's superiority in manpower, resources, materials, and everything else that goes into the waging of successful war can only be overcome by the correct application of guerrilla methods.Guerrilla warfare might be defined as the resistance of all the people to enemy power. In the struggle the guerrillas act as the spearhead of the resistance.Up to the second world war the military textbooks ignored this phase of warfare. After that they couldn't afford to ignore it. Now the General Staffs are working out methods of dealing with guerrillas. Britain has built an independent Brigade to deal with them. In the age of the HBomb, strangely enough, the tactics of guerrillas are being widely copied.For example, the former British Chief of the General Staff and Commander of the 14th Army, Field Marshal Sir William Slim, has this to say on the matter:"Dispersed fighting, whether the dispersal is caused by the terrain, the lack of supplies or by the weapons of the enemy, will have two main requirements—skilled and determined junior leaders and self-reliant, physically-hard, well disciplined troops."Success in future land operations will depend on the immediate availability of such leaders and such soldiers, ready to operate in small independent formations. They will have to be prepared to do without regular lines of communications, to guide themselves and to subsist largely on what the country offers."Unseen, unheard and unsuspected, they will converge on the enemy, and, when they do reveal themselves in strength, they will be so close to him that he will be unable to atomise them without destroying himself."That then is the blueprint of warfare in the atomic age-the tactics and strategy of guerrillas.