Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2020 February 20

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February 20

The Larne gun-running - endorsed by the Kaiser?

My question is about the Larne gun-running.

According to our article on the subject, "Crawford secured the services of the SS Fanny to transport 216 tons of guns and ammunition which he had purchased from Benny Spiro, an arms dealer in Hamburg."

My question is: was Benny Spiro acting in a "purely personal capacity", simply looking to make a buck? Or was the supply of weapons officially "authorised" by the German Kaiser's government, with intent to give grief to Great Britain?

My understanding is that Germany, a rival (and soon to be bitter enemy) of Great Britain, wanted to supply both sides of the sectarian divide in Ireland, so as to cause difficulties for the British, and divert military resources which could have been otherwise used against Germany. (That there was some blowback from such a policy would have been an obvious risk, but perhaps it was a calculated one). I recall reading as much on Wikipedia somewhere. But can anybody locate any sources which explicitly describe orders or records from the Kaiser or his officials, authorising the supply of the weapons by Benny Spiro to the gun-runners?

@Alansplodge: just pinging you because you've been really good at researching these sort of history questions for me in the past; can you dig anything up for me on this one? Others, feel free to chip in too of course. Eliyohub (talk) 15:03, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

The Irish Factor, 1899-1919: Ireland's Strategic and Diplomatic Importance for Foreign Powers, Jérôme aan De Wiel (2008), Irish Academic Press, ISBN 978-0716528647.

"In Berlin, he (Frederick H. Crawford) contacted arms dealers but they proved to be rather uncooperative as they informed the British government of Crawford's intentions. However, the major did not easily give up and soon was in contact with another dealer called Benny Spiro who promised to help him. A strong friendship would develop between the two men. A short time later, the first rifles packed in the harbour of Hamburg reached Ulster." (p. 27)

"It is known that just before the outbreak of the hostilities, the Kaiser expressed ideas of fomenting troubles and uprisings throughout the British Empire. But it is most unlikely that he himself had ordered the organization of an uprising in Ireland as early as March and April 1914. It is also a fact that during the war the Auswartiges Amt, in conjunction with the general staff, was responsible for destabilization programmes within enemy countries. It cannot be excluded, however, that certain military and political cliques in Germany had taken some initiative to mount destabilization operations in Ireland without the Kaiser knowing, as he was more and more left in the dark by his entourage. In 1912 for instance, the naval attaché of the embassy in London, Wilhelm Widenmann, was on leave in Berlin and met Admiral von Muller, the chief of the naval cabinet, to whom he exposed his plans about a future three-front war against Britain, France and Russia. Widenmann had correctly predicted that the Royal Navy would strangle Germany economically and that German strategy had to consider this very seriously. Therefore a war game should be created to envisage this scenario and develop a solution. The Kaiser had to direct it together with other other militaries. Von Muller simply replied: 'Because of the Kaiser's personality it is not feasible.' General von Moltke, the commander-in-chief, was of the same opinion. Furthermore, in 1934 in a letter to Wilhelm II, then living in exile in the Netherlands, Widenmann explained that before the war certain military circles had reached conclusions on Germany's possible strategy against Britain, of which the Kaiser had not been informed. There are no documents that prove beyond any doubt that some people were involved in the destabilization of Britain through Ireland, but as will be seen shortly there are some indications that this might have been the case... Back in 1913, Major Frederick Crawford met Benny Spiro, an arms dealer in Berlin, for the first time. The two men got on well and Spiro was ready to help Crawford, whose mission was to acquire good rifles and ammunition for the UVF. Carson of course, was fully behind Crawford." (p. 69)

That's all I could find from that source I'm afraid, as Google will only show "snippet views" and there's a limit to how much you can wring out. Alansplodge (talk) 18:55, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

MUCH appreciated! Thank you for your excellent answer! Eliyohub (talk) 20:17, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

Help finding citation for a Rex Murphy quote on Peter MacKay

Hey Reference Desk! Long time user, first time caller. There are a couple of quotes in the article for Canadian politician Peter MacKay that have been unsourced for almost a decade now, and I would love some help trying to find the column in question. This is the first one:

Rex Murphy noted in a Globe and Mail column that MacKay's leadership arrived "stillborn" and that, perhaps for the first time in recent memory, a party immediately emerged from a leadership convention grievously weakened and even less united than when it entered the convention.

Would anybody with access to the G&M archives be able to find that column for me? There are several Citation Needed sentences in the PC leadership convention section of the article, so hopefully your help can be the first breadcrumb in cleaning that up! Thanks for your help! Bkissin (talk) 20:30, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

The quote is included in this blog but its plausible that Wikipedia is the source for it. In the event that nobody here is able to help, you could try the helpful folks at WikiProject Resource Exchange/Resource Request. Alansplodge (talk) 21:55, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

Note in particular that that item attributes the words "grievously weakened and even less united..." to Murphy, whereas the Wikipedia article shows them as a paraphrase and not a quotation. This does look like careless misattribution. --69.159.8.46 (talk) 00:09, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

Any Toronto Public Library member has access to Globe & Mail back issues via ProQuest. However, its searching is only as good as the OCRing of the articles. That said, I just did a bunch of searches of articles printed after 2001. I did not find any articles using both words "stillborn" and "murphy"; I found only a handful of articles using both "stillborn" and "mackay", and none that fit the description. I also searched for combinations like "rex murphy" and "leader", which did produce plenty of hits, but none of the ones I read were relevant. Conclusion: to the extent that ProQuest searching is a reliable method, I can say that no such article or column appeared in the paper. But Rex Murphy did not only write for the paper. Conceivably he actually said it on the CBC, for example. --69.159.8.46 (talk) 00:09, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

That was my thought too, and unless someone has LexisNexis and is willing to sift through transcripts of The National, I don't know if that's as easy to find. Bkissin (talk) 13:13, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

It is Campbell Clark (october 18, 2003) who mentions the term stillborn, "Some opponents are privately suggesting that they will consider a legal challenge to any decision they view as conflicting with the Tory party's constitution -- possibly even asking the courts to strike down the ratification. In theory, that could leave the new Conservative Party stillborn while a rump group goes on as the Progressive Conservative Party," in an article titled Opponents of merger hint at legal fight. The only Rex Murphy articles I could find that might be close are Rex Murphy (Sept 26, 2003) and Reality Bites the right's rump (Sept 27, 2003) where he talks about "Mr. MacKay is in effect negotiating himself out of the leadership," in both articles. 142.244.34.239 (talk) 17:19, 27 February 2020 (UTC)