in smart lounge suits as passive spectators of the
scene, when as a matter of fact they were merely spying out--and of
course rightly so doing--the movements of the Sinn Feiners, together
with their strength and dispositions, and then 'phoning up the
information to headquarters.

Naturally it was a method of operations which greatly endangered the
_bona fide_ civilian, but on the whole he suffered more at the hands of
the military than the Volunteer; in fact, over and over again I came
across instances, sometimes of ignorance, sometimes of anger, sometimes
of sheer recklessness, of the troops firing at anyone who appeared in
certain localities.

As regards the general "sniping" methods employed in the whole of the
Dublin rising it is hard to speak: certainly many of the Sinn Feiners
would have preferred a fight in the open, and the soldiers--especially
at Mount Street Bridge--felt it desperately unfair, but, under the
circumstances, it became the only chance of the rebels, just as the use
of shells was that of the military.

The extreme Irish loyalist merchant, of course, would have none of this;
he denounced them all with the words "cowards, murderers, and criminals"
in the full sense of the terms, and anyone who differed from him had
Sinn Fein sympathies, and was on the list of suspects, which was rather
unfair, not so much to the Sinn Feiner himself, who knew he could not
have got any justice from him in any case, but unfair to the soldier and
unfair to England. Thus, while elderly retired colonels and academic
professors called for drastic vengeance on the scoundrels, what
impressed such men as Colonel Brereton, who had actually had the
experience of falling into their hands in the G.P.O., was "the
international military tone adopted by the Sinn Feiners" and their
peculiarly high standard of character.

"They were not," he declared, "out for massacre, for burning, or for
loot. They were out for war, observing all the rules of civilized
warfare, and fighting clean. So far as I saw they fought like gentlemen
(?). They had possession of the restaurant in the Courts, stocked with
spirits and champagne and other wines, yet there was no sign of
drinking. I was informed that they were all total abstainers. They
treated their prisoners with the utmost courtesy and consideration--in
fact, they proved by their conduct what they were--men of education,
incapable of acts of brutality, though, also, misguided and fed up wit