ll as by pity, and is
all the more fitting because it will be a recognition of the fact that
the rising was the work of a handful of persons, mostly ignorant,
unbalanced visionaries, and is unequivocally condemned by the vast
majority of the Irish people.--I am, faithfully yours,

"BRYCE.
"FOREST ROW, SUSSEX, _May 4th._"

By this time, however, the matter had almost reached the character of a
"pogrom." Not only had the seven signatories of the famous proclamation
been executed, but every day brought another victim to the wall and told
of another long list of sentences to penal servitude and other
penalties, while deportations--the old Cromwellian touch, when the West
Indies were peopled with Irish political offenders--reached the colossal
figure of over two thousand.

Militarism is of course always a last painful resort, but there were
some who seemed to look upon it as an end in itself. A writer in the
_Spectator_ said Lord Kitchener must be made Lord-Lieutenant, as the
situation called for a soldier, and the hero of Omdurman was the nearest
approach to the good old Cromwellian type.

The _Irish Times_, more English than the English themselves, then came
out with the following amazing solution:--

"We hope that martial law will be maintained in Ireland for many
months. When the time comes for its removal, the change to civil
government ought to be smooth and gradual. This end can best be
secured--in fact can only be secured--by the presence at the Viceregal
Lodge of a soldier who, having taken his part in government under
martial law, will be able to transmit the spirit of military
administration to the civil instruments of the State."

The situation had reached a crisis, and it was then, and not till then,
that the true feeling of the country came out in John Dillon's outburst
that be Sir John Maxwell's character what it might--and he confessed to
never having heard of him in his life--"he would refuse, and Ireland
would refuse, to accept the character of any man as the sole guarantee
of a nation's liberty," and the idea of military discretion fell dead at
the phrase, shot through the heart.

It was high time too, for, as the case of Sheehy Skeffington proved,
that discretion had been so discreet as to be unaware of its own acts,
the investigation being promised after execution, which was just our
whole complaint against the Germans in Belgium.[1]