y followed by the Boy Scouts, excitement and
longing for battle was running high in all our veins. The Irish
Volunteers were also on the alert, and stood, we are informed, until
after 2 a.m. on Saturday morning. Since then the hall has been guarded
day and night."

The paper then goes on to speak of how "the heroic fighting at Suvla
Bay, and even the valorous defence of Verdun, fades into insignificance
side by side in Dublin by the Citizen Army, and describes how Liberty
Hall is being guarded by day and by night," and then goes on to point
out the danger which such open disregard of authority may lead to
eventually.

Then follow two significant quotations, one from the _Irish Volunteer_
and the other from _The Spark_. The latter is an open boast of the
efficacy of arms, and runs:--

"A few thousand Irishmen, who took the precaution or providing
themselves with lethal weapons of one kind or another, have, without
contesting a constituency and without sending a man to Westminster,
compelled the Westminster Parliament to admit publicly that it dared not
pass any legislation which they, the armed men, did not choose to
permit."

Eoin MacNeill's threat is hardly less significant:--

"If our arms are demanded from us, we shall refuse to surrender them.
If force is used to take them from us, we shall make the most effective
resistance in our power. Let there be no mistake or misunderstanding on
that point.... We shall defend our arms with our lives."

Now, whatever may be thought of such sentiments, there can be no doubt
whence they originated, for they are sheer Carsonism through and
through; and it was, as I have repeatedly pointed out, a pure stroke of
luck that it was not Belfast's City Hall instead of Dublin's Post Office
that was burnt to the ground.

This physical force element, therefore, the Sinn Feiners and Larkinites
had in common with the Redmondites and Ulstermen: the fact that they
actually were the first to put the principle into operation is no
difference at all.

In other words, we have to go deeper for a specific distinction, and
that distinction is to be found in the very nature of the parties
themselves who combined to form the provisional Republic.

They were two movements which had grown up outside the two Parliamentary
parties and which refused to believe in Parliamentarianism as much for
the simple reason that their respective watchwords had become more or
less worn-out tags, out of touch w