n khaki for a couple of months the Volunteers had been in
training ever since the beginning of the war, going through route
marches, manoeuvres, and sham fighting week by week and, towards the
end, night by night.

True, the money may have been appropriated from such Government supplies
as fell into their hands, and there is no doubt that technically they
had no right to such stores; but they had every precedent, and there is
even a story which tells of one of the leaders particularly asking one
of the captured military to see that the safe in the G.P.O. was not
touched.

There were certainly no cases of prisoners surrendering and being
instantly shot; nor did civilians complain of any wanton looting of the
occupied premises, though at Jacobs's and Boland's full use was made of
the stores; nor were there any of the Volunteers found drunk. Certainly
they should have prevented looting, but it was a duty as much incumbent
upon any civilian.

In other words, in so far as it could reflect upon the national
character, there was little that could be reproached against the
movement save its insensate folly and, of course, the technical
criminality of revolt.

On the whole the thing was on a far higher ethical plane than the
methods employed by the Fenians, as well as more widespread, and the
thing was far and away more dignified than poor Smith O'Brien's rising,
which ended, as it began, in a humble cabbage-patch.

Some of their bullets were of course of the vilest type, inflicting
ghastly wounds; but I heard of no misuse of the white flag--in fact,
when the ladies who had been found in the College of Surgeons were
offered their freedom as non-combatants because they had merely been
doing hospital work, they refused on the ground that as they were in
full sympathy with the movement they claimed the full honours of the
penalties of failure.

Two things, however, must be mentioned--the one was their use of
civilian clothes, and the second was their employment of "sniping"
methods, both of which were highly dangerous to the rest of the
non-combatant population.

With regard to the first--the use of civilian clothes--everybody who
possessed a uniform wore it, but the enthusiasm of the recruits outran
the means of equipment; and in any case it was adopted equally by the
military, who in not a few cases owed their lives to a quick change into
mufti, and who in other cases spent most of Monday and Tuesday in
Sackville Street