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America's loss was to be Ireland's gain. For if Michael Collins had taken his brother Pat's advice, the Republic of Ireland might not exist today. Watching the storm clouds of World War I gather over Europe, Pat had written to Michael from Chicago urging his young brother to leave his job in a London financial institution and come to join him in America. Had they teamed up, one is tempted to speculate that one of the all time great Pat and Mike success stories might have resulted. As it was, Pat became a captain of police in Chicago and Michael went on to destroy the Irish police force, the armed Royal Irish Constabulary (R.I.C.). In doing so he laid the foundations for today's unarmed Irish police, the Garda Síochána or Civic Guard. In the early stages of World War I, the then twenty six year old Collins agonised over Pat's letters inviting him to America.

He took long lonely walks through London's dockland, seeing the ships leave for the New World, wondering should he go himself. War meant conscription would come, bringing with it an unthinkable choice: to become a conscientious objector, a course repugnant to his warrior soul, or to don a British uniform and fight for the Crown.

Collins solved the problem in his own inimitable way. He put on an Irish uniform and went to fight for Ireland, in the 1916 Easter Rebellion in Dublin. He was captured and sent to Frongoch Internment Camp in Wales, the Republican University as it was known. It was here, in prison, that he began to think out a new philosophy of warfare and to re organise the Irish Republican Brotherhood, the I.R.B., which later spearheaded the fight for Irish independence and led to the creation of modern Ireland. He was also the founder of modern urban guerilla warfare, the first freedom fighter, or urban terrorist.

Mao Tse tSung studied his methods. And Yatzik Shamir, the former Prime Minister of Israel, was so impressed with Collins that not alone did he study him, he took the codename Micail for his Irgun unit during the Israeli war of independence against the British. Before considering his career and writings, I must briefly diverge to look at Collins' origins and examine what led him to a London counting house in the first place. He was born, the youngest of eight children, on a ninety acre farm, a good holding for Catholics of the time, near Clonakilty in West Cork in 1890, to a remarkable set of parents. His father was nearly forty years older than his mother, Marianne, and was in his seventy sixth year when Michael arrived. Neither parent had much formal education but they both knew French, Latin, Greek, Irish and English. And, apart from being an expert farmer and veterinarian, Michael senior was also noted for his knowledge of astronomy, mathematics, and for his skill as a builder.

The Collins, or the O'Coileain as they were known in Irish, were once a very considerable Munster clan. And the family, both in Michael Collins' day and in our own, is recognised as being unusually intelligent and well doing. However Michael senior died when young Michael was six, leaving Marianne to run the farm and look after the eight children.