100 years ago in Spokane: Irish leader tells crowd Britain’s hold on island is ‘fated to fail’

Eamonn de Valera, the provisional “president of the Irish republic,” addressed a huge crowd at the Auditorium Theater, which included 400 people who were allowed to stand and sit on the stage itself.

“Ireland is a distinct and separate nation,” said de Valera. “Thank God we came from a distinct race and it was not British. We never have been a part of the British nation and we are not now. Through armed force and brute might, England has got the body of Ireland, but she never has the soul.”

De Valera had recently escaped from a British jail, but he declared, “I am not an exile and not a fugitive from justice. I came from Ireland of my own free will to break through the ring that surrounded the island. I wanted to remove the gag.”

“No empire has ever lived and the British Empire will go the same way of death as the others,” he told the crowd. “Some imagine our fight is hopeless. That is not so. Empires have gone in the past and the British Empire – the greatest slaveholder in the world today, throttling men who should be free – will go the way of Assyria and Rome and all the rest. It is a certainty that the British empire will die and our cause ultimately will win. Our foe is fated to fail.”

The crowd gave him a “rousing sendoff” as he closed and “many rushed up to the stage to shake hands with him.”

The Gonzaga University orchestra played several numbers during the event, and Harry Girard sang Irish songs.