week, and I was lucky
enough to get back from Howth, a journey which I had to cover on foot,
just in time to see it from a few minutes after the start.

The Sinn Feiners had got Clanwilliam House--a corner
residence--wonderfully barricaded, and the Sherwood Foresters, who had
just taken Carisbrook House and Ballsbridge after considerable losses,
were now advancing to cross over the canal and so enter the town and
relieve the O.T.C. in Trinity.

Clanwilliam House not only dominated the bridge, but also the whole of
Northumberland Road.

Along this road the troops had to pass, and they crouched down in long
rows of heads--like great khaki caterpillars--in a most terribly exposed
order, so that if the rebel shot failed to hit the first head it was
bound to hit the second head, provided the rifle was anywhere in the
vertical line. For the most part the soldiers were boys in their early
twenties, utterly ignorant of the district, with orders to take the
town, which was reported in the hands of a body of men whose very name
was a mysterious puzzle in pronunciation, and not an enemy in sight,
only a mass of civilian spectators up to within fifty yards of them and
directly in front, blocking the street--the rebel enemy meanwhile
inside private houses to the right and left of the narrow bridgehead,
they knew not where.

I arrived on the scene a few minutes after the start of the engagement,
but already one could see the poor fellows writhing in agony in the
roadway, where the advanced line had been sniped by the terrible leaden
bullets of the Sinn Feiners.

For half an hour or so I was a passive spectator, though intensely
interested by the sight of a real battle going on under my very eyes at
a distance hardly more than that of the gallery from a large music-hall
stage; but suddenly I felt a complete change come over me, which I yet
fail to explain to myself. The usual cowardice of the spectator seemed
to leave me, and I wanted to rush over and help, but I was assured that
it would mean instant death to come between the line of combatants--"The
Sinn Feiners would fire on anyone, the blackguards." This I refused to
believe, and spoke to a Methodist clergyman, who soon shared my views,
and together we made our way to Dun's Hospital, where the doctors and
nurses in white stood in the doorway. Within a couple of minutes'
conversation we had all spontaneously decided to venture under the Red
Cross and put it to the test. They