ent, for every
now and then the Sinn Feiners would fire blank cartridges, and each time
they did so, with the one cry "The soldiers are coming!" a mass of
several thousand men, women, and children would rush now to one end of
Sackville Street, now to the other. After Noblet's it was the Saxon Shoe
Company and Dunn's hat-shop's turn to be looted, and one could see
little guttersnipe wearing high silk hats and new bowlers and straws,
who had never worn headgear before: bare-footed little devils with legs
buried in Wellington top-boots, unable to bend their knees, and drunken
women brandishing satin shoes and Russian boots till it seemed as if the
whole revolution would collapse in ridicule or pandemonium. For there
was no animosity in the crowd at first, just as there was no
enthusiasm--certainly no avarice or desire for theft--only sheer
demoralization and mischief for mischief's sake: but every hour it
became worse. Sometimes there was absolutely no point in the loot. I saw
an urchin of nine brandishing with pride More's "Utopia" and Wells's
"New Machiavelli," which he compared with a rival urchin's--a
girl's--bunch of newspapers on "Poultry" and "Wireless," and solemnly
exchanging their treasures.

I saw a tussle between two drunken harlots for the possession of a
headless dummy taken from a draper's shop, and noted a youngster go up
to the very steps of the Provisional Government House of the New
Republic of Ireland and amuse the armed rebels with impersonations of
Charlie Chaplin.

In another portion of the street I saw a drunken sailor mad with hate
make a furious assault upon a woman, and then, when the crowd yelled in
horror, suddenly change his mind from murder and kiss his victim: while
in yet another portion of the street a woman of about sixty was kneeling
with hands outstretched to heaven, clasping a rosary and crying her
prayers to the Mother of God in heaven for "Ireland to be a nation once
again!"

Time after time I felt inclined to weep with very shame at the whole
thing; for as I passed a group of young English _revue_ girls who had
come along to see the "show," I heard one exclaim, "A little bit of
heaven, and they call it Ireland!" and everyone laughed; and another
threw out the gibe: "Irish, and proud of it, eh?"

They were not meant as insults--no, certainly not--merely the happy
laughing cynicism of the common-sense view that would be taken of us by
hundreds of cartoonists; but I must say they