The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1922-11-25
De VALERA CHIEF IS.
PUT TO DEATH BY.
IRISH FREE STATE.
Erskine ChiIders, Leader in
Battles of. Republic, Exc
cuted for Having Pistol
in Possession

Dublin, November 24.--Erskino
childers. chief lieutenant of canon
de Valera. was executed here today.
He was executed at o'clock this
morning for having had an automat-
ic pistol in his possession, it is an
nounced in an official bulletin given
out by the national army.
Erskino Childers, SO, a lieutenant
commander in the Irish republican
army, and one of the right hand men
of canon de Valera. was placed on
trial before military tribunal in
Dublin November II on the charge
| that he had pistol in his possess
SIGN when arrested at Wieklaw by
The trial lasted two days. Chiders
appealed through counsel for writ
of habeas corpus, which was denied
yesterday BY the master of the rolls.
He then appealed to the court OF
appeals for southern Ireland.
Childers was an ardent proponent
of an Irish republic and strongly OPP
posed ratification of the treaty set
ting up the irish Free State on the
ground that it meant absorption of
Ireland in the British empire. He
was defeated last June in the cleo
ton for the south Irish parliament
receiving fewer votes than any other
candidate in the whole election.
Early in the next month he was
reported to be organizing a band Of
insurgents in the Dublin hills and
later in the summer commanded the
band of Irregulars who cut the cable
in Valentia harbor.
London, November 24.-The execu
ton of Erskine Childers has shocked
and startled England even more than
did the death of Michael Collins.
Well wishers of the Irish Free State,
of whom there are many in London,
expect that the execution of Chill
ders may mean the beginning of
new chapter in the turbulent his
tory of ireland. In many quarters
today the fear was expressed that
this chapter may be described by the
word "reprisals" and that the re-
prisals may be bloodier and develop
into more intense internecne war
fare than that which has gone before.
Many people in England were
shocked because they knew Childers;
knew him when he bore an honored
name as a British patriot who rem
dered his country good service In the
African war and when he was some
thing of hero in the British literary
world as author of THE Riddle of
the Sands" This work was hailed
as not only of great literary merit
but as something of a tract on pa
troitism.
None of Childers' old friends who
were spoken to today seemed to know
just when and why he underwent the
Transformation from an ardent Brit
ish patriot to an Irish revolutionary.
His mother was an Irish woman. The
Childers family came from dis
tinguished line. The dead mans
father gained fame as an oriental
scholar.
Childers' wife is an American and
traces her ancestry back to the
American revolutionary days in the
lineage of the Putnam family. She
was the heroine of an adventure
when Childers, in 1914. as a retort
to the Obstetrics landing arms in
north ireland, brought consign-
ment of arms for south Ireland to
the coast a short distance north of
Dublin. Mrs. Chlders, who is de-
scribed as a daring yachtswoman Is
said to have piloted the yacht to the
coast in the darkness of night.