On December 23, 1920—one month and two days after Bloody Sunday—de Valera arrived back in Dublin. He was greeted by Tom Cullen and Batt O'Connor, two of Collins' closest friends, at the boat. De Valera asked how things were going. "Great," gushed Cullen. "The Big Fellow is leading us and everything is going marvelous."
"Big Fellow," de Valera huffed, "We'll see who's the Big Fellow!" It was apparent that Eamon de Valera did not return to Ireland to play second fiddle to Michael Collins.
It was during this period (December 1920-July 1921) that the Irish and English tried to figure out how to get out of the quagmire that had become Ireland. De Valera quickly downsized Collins with the help of Cathal Brugha and Austin Stack. Collins' stark tongue and brutal efficiency had been felt by both of them during de Valera's absence. Collins had shamelessly poached Brugha's portfolio as the Minister for Defence and had mocked Stack's work at Home Affairs. Now it was payback time.
Collins and de Valera also differed on how the war was to proceed. Soon after he returned from America de Valera told Mulcahy "You are going too fast. This odd shooting of a policeman here and there is having a very bad effect, from the propaganda point of view, on us in America. What we want is, one good battle about once a month with about 500 men on each side."
Collins was incensed. While he and his men had put their lives on the line every day, sleeping in a different bed every night, this is the thanks he got from someone who had been living it up at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City for the past two years.
Subsequently, De Valera finally got his "one good battle." Dev decided to burn down the Customs House in May 1921. Collins was against it and tried to protect his men and his Squad from participating in it as much as he could. It was obvious that de Valera didn't understand guerrilla warfare. The Customs House burned, but over 100 volunteers were apprehended. Collins knew his army was close to elimination.
Ironically, the British misjudged their victory. They did not know that they had delivered a near fatal death blow to the Dublin IRA and now had them on the ropes. They wrongly concluded that this audacious act proved that the IRA was strong and far from defeated. Both de Valera and the British got it wrong—and in the fog of war, King George V brokered a truce within two months. This is one of the few times in history where two wrongs made a right!
