Insurrection in Dublin — Part 3

THURSDAY.

Again, the rumours greeted one.

This place had fallen and had not fallen.

Such a position had been captured by the soldiers; recaptured by the Volunteers, and had not been attacked at all.

But certainly fighting was proceeding.

Up Mount Street, the rifle volleys were continuous, and the coming and going of ambulance cars from that direction were continuous also.

Some spoke of pitched battles on the bridge, and said that as yet the advantage lay with the Volunteers.

At 11. 30 there came the sound of heavy guns firing in the direction of Sackville Street.

I went on the roof, and remained there for some time.

From this height the sounds could be heard plainly.

There was sustained firing along the whole central line of the City, from the Green down to Trinity College, and from thence to Sackville Street, and the report of the various types of arm could be easily distinguished.

There were rifles, machine guns and very heavy cannon.

There was another sound which I could not put a name to, something that coughed out over all the other sounds, a short, sharp bark, or rather a short noise something like the popping of a tremendous cork.

I met D. H.

His chief emotion is one of astonishment at the organizing powers displayed by the Volunteers.

We have exchanged rumours, and found that our equipment in this direction is almost identical.

He says Sheehy Skeffington has been killed.

That he was arrested in a house wherein arms were found, and was shot out of hand.

I hope this is another rumour, for, so far as my knowledge of him goes, he was not with the Volunteers, and it is said that he was antagonistic to the forcible methods for which the Volunteers stood.

But the tale of his death is so persistent that one is inclined to believe it.

He was the most absurdly courageous man I have ever met with or heard of.

He has been in every trouble that has touched Ireland these ten years back, and he has always been in on the generous side, therefore, and naturally, on the side that was unpopular and weak.

It would seem indeed that a cause had only to be weak to gain his sympathy, and his sympathy never stayed at home.

There are so many good people who "sympathise" with this or that cause, and, having given that measure of their emotion, they give no more of it or of anything else.

But he rushed instantly to the street.

A large stone, the lift of a footpath, the base of a statue, any place and every place was for him a pulpit;

and, in the teeth of whatever oppression or disaster or power, he said his say.

There are multitudes of men in Dublin of all classes and creeds who can boast that they kicked Sheehy Skeffington, or that they struck him on the head with walking sticks and umbrellas, or that they smashed their fists into his face, and jumped on him when he fell.

It is by no means an exaggeration to say that these things were done to him, and it is true that he bore ill-will to no man, and that he accepted blows, and indignities and ridicule with the pathetic candour of a child who is disguised as a man, and whose disguise cannot come off.

His tongue, his pen, his body, all that he had and hoped for were at the immediate service of whoever was bewildered or oppressed.

He has been shot.

Other men have been shot, but they faced the guns knowing that they faced justice, however stern and oppressive; and that what they had engaged to confront was before them.

He had no such thought to soothe from his mind anger or unforgiveness.

He who was a pacifist was compelled to revolt to his last breath, and on the instruments of his end he must have looked as on murderers.

I am sure that to the end he railed against oppression, and that he fell marvelling that the world can truly be as it is.

With his death there passed away a brave man and a clean soul.

Later on this day I met Mrs. Sheehy Skeffington in the street.

She confirmed the rumour that her husband had been arrested on the previous day, but further than that she had no news.

So far as I know the sole crime of which her husband had been guilty was that he called for a meeting of the citizens to enrol special constables and prevent looting.

Among the rumours it was stated with every accent of certitude that Madame Markievicz had been captured in George's Street, and taken to the Castle.

It was also current that Sir Roger Casement had been captured at sea and had already been shot in the Tower of London.

The names of several Volunteer Leaders are mentioned as being dead.

But the surmise that steals timidly from one mouth flies boldly as a certitude from every mouth that repeats it, and truth itself would now be listened to with only a gossip's ear, but no person would believe a word of it.

This night also was calm and beautiful, but this night was the most sinister and woeful of those that have passed.

The sound of artillery, of rifles, machine guns, grenades, did not cease even for a moment.

From my window I saw a red flare that crept to the sky, and stole over it and remained there glaring; the smoke reached from the ground to the clouds, and I could see great red sparks go soaring to enormous heights; while always, in the calm air, hour after hour there was the buzzing and rattling and thudding of guns, and, but for the guns, silence.

It is in a dead silence this Insurrection is being fought, and one imagines what must be the feeling of these men, young for the most part, and unused to violence, who are submitting silently to the crash and flame and explosion by which they are surrounded.

CHAPTER V. FRIDAY.

This morning there are no newspapers, no bread, no milk, no news.

The sun is shining, and the streets are lively but discreet.

All people continue to talk to one another without distinction of class, but nobody knows what any person thinks.

It is a little singular the number of people who are smiling.

I fancy they were listening to the guns last night, and they are smiling this morning because the darkness is past, and because the sun is shining, and because they can move their limbs in space, and may talk without having to sink their voices to a whisper.

Guns do not sound so bad in the day as they do at night, and no person can feel lonely while the sun shines.

The men are smiling, but the women laugh, and their laughter does not displease, for whatever women do in whatever circumstances appears to have a rightness of its own.

It seems right that they should scream when danger to themselves is imminent, and it seems right that they should laugh when the danger only threatens others.

It is rumoured this morning that Sackville Street has been burned out and levelled to the ground.

It is said that the end is in sight; and, it is said, that matters are, if anything rather worse than better.

That the Volunteers have sallied from some of their strongholds and entrenched themselves, and that in one place alone (the South Lotts) they have seven machine guns.

That when the houses which they held became untenable they rushed out and seized other houses, and that, pursuing these tactics, there seemed no reason to believe that the Insurrection would ever come to an end.

That the streets are filled with Volunteers in plain clothes, but having revolvers in their pockets.

That the streets are filled with soldiers equally revolvered and plain clothed, and that the least one says on any subject the less one would have to answer for.

The feeling that I tapped was definitely Anti-Volunteer, but the number of people who would speak was few, and one regarded the noncommital folk who were so smiling and polite, and so prepared to talk, with much curiosity, seeking to read in their eyes, in their bearing, even in the cut of their clothes what might be the secret movements and cogitations of their minds.

I received the impression that numbers of them did not care a rap what way it went; and that others had ceased to be mental creatures and were merely machines for registering the sensations of the time.

None of these people were prepared for Insurrection.

The thing had been sprung on them so suddenly that they were unable to take sides, and their feeling of detachment was still so complete that they would have betted on the business as if it had been a horse race or a dog fight.

Many English troops have been landed each night, and it is believed that there are more than sixty thousand soldiers in Dublin alone, and that they are supplied with every offensive contrivance which military art has invented.

Merrion Square is strongly held by the soldiers.

They are posted along both sides of the road at intervals of about twenty paces, and their guns are continually barking up at the roofs which surround them in the great square.

It is said that these roofs are held by the Volunteers from Mount Street Bridge to the Square, and that they hold in like manner wide stretches of the City.

They appear to have mapped out the roofs with all the thoroughness that had hitherto been expended on the roads, and upon these roofs they are so mobile and crafty and so much at home that the work of the soldiers will be exceedingly difficult as well as dangerous.

Still, and notwithstanding, men can only take to the roofs for a short time.

Up there, there can be no means of transport, and their ammunition, as well as their food, will very soon be used up.

It is the beginning of the end, and the fact that they have to take to the roofs, even though that be in their programme, means that they are finished.

From the roof there comes the sound of machine guns.

Looking towards Sackville Street one picks out easily Nelson's Pillar, which towers slenderly over all the buildings of the neighbourhood.

It is wreathed in smoke.

Another towering building was the D. B.

C.

Café.

Its Chinese-like pagoda was a landmark easily to be found, but to-day I could not find it.

It was not there, and I knew that, even if all Sackville Street was not burned down, as rumour insisted, this great Café had certainly been curtailed by its roof and might, perhaps, have been completely burned.

On the gravel paths I found pieces of charred and burnt paper.

These scraps must have been blown remarkably high to have crossed all the roofs that lie between Sackville Street and Merrion Square.

At eleven o'clock there is continuous firing, and snipers firing from the direction of Mount Street, and in every direction of the City these sounds are being duplicated.

In Camden Street the sniping and casualties are said to have been very heavy.

One man saw two Volunteers taken from a house by the soldiers.

They were placed kneeling in the centre of the road, and within one minute of their capture they were dead.

Simultaneously there fell several of the firing party.

An officer in this part had his brains blown into the roadway.

A young girl ran into the road picked up his cap and scraped the brains into it.

She covered this poor debris with a little straw, and carried the hat piously to the nearest hospital in order that the brains might be buried with their owner.

The continuation of her story was less gloomy although it affected the teller equally.

"There is not," said she, "a cat or a dog left alive in Camden Street.

They are lying stiff out in the road and up on the roofs.

There's lots of women will be sorry for this war," said she, "and their pets killed on them."

In many parts of the City hunger began to be troublesome.

A girl told me that her family, and another that had taken refuge with them, had eaten nothing for three days.

On this day her father managed to get two loaves of bread somewhere, and he brought these home.

"When," said the girl, "my father came in with the bread the whole fourteen of us ran at him, and in a minute we were all ashamed for the loaves were gone to the last crumb, and we were all as hungry as we had been before he came in.

The poor man," said she, "did not even get a bit for himself."

She held that the poor people were against the Volunteers.

The Volunteers still hold Jacob's Biscuit Factory.

It is rumoured that a priest visited them and counselled surrender, and they replied that they did not go there to surrender but to be killed.

They asked him to give them absolution, and the story continues that he refused to do so--but this is not (in its latter part) a story that can easily be credited.

The Adelaide Hospital is close to this factory, and it is possible that the proximity of the hospital, delays or hinders military operations against the factory.

Rifle volleys are continuous about Merrion Square, and prolonged machine gun firing can be heard also.

During the night the firing was heavy from almost every direction; and in the direction of Sackville Street a red glare told again of fire.

It is hard to get to bed these nights.

It is hard even to sit down, for the moment one does sit down one stands immediately up again resuming that ridiculous ship's march from the window to the wall and back.

I am foot weary as I have never been before in my life, but I cannot say that I am excited.

No person in Dublin is excited, but there exists a state of tension and expectancy which is mentally more exasperating than any excitement could be.

The absence of news is largely responsible for this.

We do not know what has happened, what is happening, or what is going to happen, and the reversion to barbarism (for barbarism is largely a lack of news) disturbs us.

Each night we have got to bed at last murmuring, "I wonder will it be all over to-morrow," and this night the like question accompanied us.

CHAPTER VI. SATURDAY.

This morning also there has been no bread, no milk, no meat, no newspapers, but the sun is shining.

It is astonishing that, thus early in the Spring, the weather should be so beautiful.

It is stated freely that the Post Office has been taken, and just as freely it is averred that it has not been taken.

The approaches to Merrion Square are held by the military, and I was not permitted to go to my office.

As I came to this point shots were fired at a motor car which had not stopped on being challenged.

Bystanders said it was Sir Horace Plunkett's car, and that he had been shot.

Later we found that Sir Horace was not hurt, but that his nephew who drove the car had been severely wounded.

At this hour the rumour of the fall of Verdun was persistent.

Later on it was denied, as was denied the companion rumour of the relief of Kut.

Saw R. who had spent three days and the whole of his money in getting home from County Clare.

He had heard that Mrs. Sheehy Skeffington's house was raided, and that two dead bodies had been taken out of it.

Saw Miss P. who seemed sad.

I do not know what her politics are, but I think that the word "kindness" might be used to cover all her activities.

She has a heart of gold, and the courage of many lions.

I then met Mr. Commissioner Bailey who said the Volunteers had sent a deputation, and that terms of surrender were being discussed.

I hope this is true, and I hope mercy will be shown to the men.

Nobody believes there will be any mercy shown, and it is freely reported that they are shot in the street, or are taken to the nearest barracks and shot there.

The belief grows that no person who is now in the Insurrection will be alive when the Insurrection is ended.

That is as it will be.

But these days the thought of death does not strike on the mind with any severity, and, should the European war continue much longer, the fear of death will entirely depart from man, as it has departed many times in history.

With that great deterrent gone our rulers will be gravely at a loss in dealing with strikers and other such discontented people.

Possibly they will have to resurrect the long-buried idea of torture.

The people in the streets are laughing and chatting.

Indeed, there is gaiety in the air as well as sunshine, and no person seems to care that men are being shot every other minute, or bayoneted, or blown into scraps or burned into cinders.

These things are happening, nevertheless, but much of their importance has vanished.

I met a man at the Green who was drawing a plan on the back of an envelope.

The problem was how his questioner was to get from where he was standing to a street lying at the other side of the river, and the plan as drawn insisted that to cover this quarter of an hour's distance he must set out on a pilgrimage of more than twenty miles.

Another young boy was standing near embracing a large ham.

He had been trying for three days to convey his ham to a house near the Gresham Hotel where his sister lived.

He had almost given up hope, and he hearkened intelligently to the idea that he should himself eat the ham and so get rid of it.

The rifle fire was persistent all day, but, saving in certain localities, it was not heavy.

Occasionally the machine guns rapped in.

There was no sound of heavy artillery.

The rumour grows that the Post Office has been evacuated, and that the Volunteers are at large and spreading everywhere across the roofs.

The rumour grows also that terms of surrender are being discussed, and that Sackville Street has been levelled to the ground.

At half-past seven in the evening calm is almost complete.

The sound of a rifle shot being only heard at long intervals.

I got to bed this night earlier than usual.

At two o'clock I left the window from which a red flare is yet visible in the direction of Sackville Street.

The morning will tell if the Insurrection is finished or not, but at this hour all is not over.

Shots are ringing all around and down my street, and the vicious crackling of these rifles grow at times into regular volleys.

CHAPTER VII. SUNDAY.

The Insurrection has not ceased.

There is much rifle fire, but no sound from the machine guns or the eighteen pounders and trench mortars.

From the window of my kitchen the flag of the Republic can be seen flying afar.

This is the flag that flies over Jacob's Biscuit Factory, and I will know that the Insurrection has ended as soon as I see this flag pulled down.

When I went out there were few people in the streets.

I met D. H.

, and, together, we passed up the Green.

The Republican flag was still flying over the College of Surgeons.

We tried to get down Grafton Street (where broken windows and two gaping interiors told of the recent visit of looters), but a little down this street we were waved back by armed sentries.

We then cut away by the Gaiety Theatre into Mercer's Street, where immense lines of poor people were drawn up waiting for the opening of the local bakery.

We got into George's Street, thinking to turn down Dame Street and get from thence near enough to Sackville Street to see if the rumours about its destruction were true, but here also we were halted by the military, and had to retrace our steps.

There was no news of any kind to be gathered from the people we talked to, nor had they even any rumours.

This was the first day I had been able to get even a short distance outside of my own quarter, and it seemed that the people of my quarter were more able in the manufacture of news or more imaginative than were the people who live in other parts of the city.

We had no sooner struck into home parts than we found news.

We were told that two of the Volunteer leaders had been shot.

These were Pearse and Connolly.

The latter was reported as lying in the Castle Hospital with a fractured thigh.

Pearse was cited as dead with two hundred of his men, following their sally from the Post Office.

The machine guns had caught them as they left, and none of them remained alive.

The news seemed afterwards to be true except that instead of Pearse it was The O'Rahilly who had been killed.

Pearse died later and with less excitement.

A man who had seen an English newspaper said that the Kut force had surrendered to the Turk, but that Verdun had not fallen to the Germans.

The rumour was current also that a great naval battle had been fought whereat the German fleet had been totally destroyed with loss to the English of eighteen warships.

It was said that among the captured Volunteers there had been a large body of Germans, but nobody believed it; and this rumour was inevitably followed by the tale that there were one hundred German submarines lying in the Stephen's Green pond.

At half-past two I met Mr. Commissioner Bailey, who told me that it was all over, and that the Volunteers were surrendering everywhere in the city.

A motor car with two military officers, and two Volunteer leaders had driven to the College of Surgeons and been admitted.

After a short interval Madame Marckievicz marched out of the College at the head of about 100 men, and they had given up their arms; the motor car with the Volunteer leaders was driving to other strongholds, and it was expected that before nightfall the capitulations would be complete.

I started home, and on the way I met a man whom I had encountered some days previously, and from whom rumours had sprung as though he wove them from his entrails, as a spider weaves his web.

He was no less provided on this occasion, and it was curious to listen to his tale of English defeats on every front.

He announced the invasion of England in six different quarters, the total destruction of the English fleet, and the landing of immense German armies on the West coast of Ireland.

He made these things up in his head.

Then he repeated them to himself in a loud voice, and became somehow persuaded that they had been told to him by a well-informed stranger, and then he believed them and told them to everybody he met.

Amongst other things Spain had declared war on our behalf, the Chilian Navy was hastening to our relief.

For a pin he would have sent France flying westward all forgetful of her own war.

A

singular man truly, and as I do think the only thoroughly happy person in our city.

It is half-past three o'clock, and from my window the Republican flag can still be seen flying over Jacob's factory.

There is occasional shooting, but the city as a whole is quiet.

At a quarter to five o'clock a heavy gun boomed once.

Ten minutes later there was heavy machine gun firing and much rifle shooting.

In another ten minutes the flag at Jacob's was hauled down.

During the remainder of the night sniping and military replies were incessant, particularly in my street.

The raids have begun in private houses.

Count Plunkett's house was entered by the military who remained there for a very long time.

Passing home about two minutes after Proclamation hour I was pursued for the whole of Fitzwilliam Square by bullets.

They buzzed into the roadway beside me, and the sound as they whistled near was curious.

The sound is something like that made by a very swift saw, and one gets the impression that as well as being very swift they are very heavy.

Snipers are undoubtedly on the roofs opposite my house, and they are not asleep on these roofs.

Possibly it is difficult to communicate with these isolated bands the news of their companions' surrender, but it is likely they will learn, by the diminution of fire in other quarters that their work is over.

In the morning on looking from my window I saw four policemen marching into the street.

They were the first I had seen for a week.

Soon now the military tale will finish, the police story will commence, the political story will recommence, and, perhaps, the weeks that follow this one will sow the seed of more hatred than so many centuries will be able to uproot again, for although Irish people do not greatly fear the military they fear the police, and they have very good reason to do so.

CHAPTER VIII. THE INSURRECTION IS OVER.

The Insurrection is over, and it is worth asking what has happened, how it has happened, and why it happened?

The first question is easily answered.

The finest part of our city has been blown to smithereens, and burned into ashes.

Soldiers amongst us who have served abroad say that the ruin of this quarter is more complete than any thing they have seen at Ypres, than anything they have seen anywhere in France or Flanders.

A great number of our men and women and children, Volunteers and civilians confounded alike, are dead, and some fifty thousand men who have been moved with military equipment to our land are now being removed therefrom.

The English nation has been disorganised no more than as they were affected by the transport of these men and material.

That is what happened, and it is all that happened.

How it happened is another matter, and one which, perhaps, will not be made clear for years.

All we know in Dublin is that our city burst into a kind of spontaneous war; that we lived through it during one singular week, and that it faded away and disappeared almost as swiftly as it had come.

The men who knew about it are, with two exceptions, dead, and these two exceptions are in gaol, and likely to remain there long enough.

(Since writing one of these men has been shot.

) Why it happened is a question that may be answered more particularly.

It happened because the leader of the Irish Party misrepresented his people in the English House of Parliament.

On the day of the declaration of war between England and Germany he took the Irish case, weighty with eight centuries of history and tradition, and he threw it out of the window.

He pledged Ireland to a particular course of action, and he had no authority to give this pledge and he had no guarantee that it would be met.

The ramshackle intelligence of his party and his own emotional nature betrayed him and us and England.

He swore Ireland to loyalty as if he had Ireland in his pocket, and could answer for her.

Ireland has never been disloyal to England, not even at this epoch, because she has never been loyal to England, and the profession of her National faith has been unwavering, has been known to every English person alive, and has been clamant to all the world beside.

Is it that he wanted to be cheered?

He could very easily have stated Ireland's case truthfully, and have proclaimed a benevolent neutrality (if he cared to use the grandiloquent words) on the part of this country.

He would have gotten his cheers, he would in a few months have gotten Home Rule in return for Irish soldiers.

He would have received politically whatever England could have safely given him.

But, alas, these carefulnesses did not chime with his emotional moment.

They were not magnificent enough for one who felt that he was talking not to Ireland or to England, but to the whole gaping and eager earth, and so he pledged his country's credit so deeply that he did not leave her even one National rag to cover herself with.

After a lie truth bursts out, and it is no longer the radiant and serene goddess knew or hoped for--it is a disease, it is a moral syphilis and will ravage until the body in which it can dwell has been purged.

Mr. Redmond told the lie and he is answerable to England for the violence she had to be guilty of, and to Ireland for the desolation to which we have had to submit.

Without his lie there had been no Insurrection; without it there had been at this moment, and for a year past, an end to the "Irish question."

Ireland must in ages gone have been guilty of abominable crimes or she could not at this juncture have been afflicted with a John Redmond.

He is the immediate cause of this our latest Insurrection--the word is big, much too big for the deed, and we should call it row, or riot, or squabble, in order to draw the fact down to its dimensions, but the ultimate blame for the trouble between the two countries does not fall against Ireland.

The fault lies with England, and in these days while an effort is being made (interrupted, it is true, by cannon) to found a better understanding between the two nations it is well that England should recognize what she has done to Ireland, and should try at least to atone for it.

The situation can be explained almost in a phrase.

We are a little country and you, a huge country, have persistently beaten us.

We are a poor country and you, the richest country in the world, have persistently robbed us.

That is the historical fact, and whatever national or political necessities are opposed in reply, it is true that you have never given Ireland any reason to love you, and you cannot claim her affection without hypocrisy or stupidity.

You think our people can only be tenacious in hate--it is a lie.

Our historical memory is truly tenacious, but during the long and miserable tale of our relations you have never given us one generosity to remember you by, and you must not claim our affection or our devotion until you are worthy of them.

We are a good people; almost we are the only Christian people left in the world, nor has any nation shown such forbearance towards their persecutor as we have always shown to you.

No nation has forgiven its enemies as we have forgiven you, time after time down the miserable generations, the continuity of forgiveness only equalled by the continuity of your ill-treatment.

Between our two countries you have kept and protected a screen of traders and politicians who are just as truly your enemies as they are ours.

In the end they will do most harm to you for we are by this vaccinated against misery but you are not, and the "loyalists" who sell their own country for a shilling will sell another country for a penny when the opportunity comes and safety with it.

Meanwhile do not always hasten your presents to us out of a gun.

You have done it so often that your guns begin to bore us, and you have now an opportunity which may never occur again to make us your friends.

There is no bitterness in Ireland against you on account of this war, and the lack of ill-feeling amongst us is entirely due to the more than admirable behaviour of the soldiers whom you sent over here.

A peace that will last for ever can be made with Ireland if you wish to make it, but you must take her hand at once, for in a few months' time she will not open it to you; the old, bad relations will re-commence, the rancor will be born and grow, and another memory will be stored away in Ireland's capacious and retentive brain.

CHAPTER IX.