s been captured by the Sinn Feiners," "Soldiers and
police are being shot at sight," "Larkin's Citizen Army are firing on
women and children," but, for the most part, these rumours were
discredited as impossible, at most being put down as some accidental
clash between military and civilians, and it was only as people rushed
into the street and heard the stories of the encounters first-hand that
they began to realize that anything unusual was taking place.

Bodies of armed men had indeed been remarked in unusually large numbers
in the streets all the morning, increasing and concentrating towards
twelve, but everyone had grown so accustomed to these demonstrations for
the past three years, since they had been inaugurated in Ulster by Sir
Edward Carson, that nobody had taken any particular notice.

People merely remarked that it was rather strange, in view of the
abandonment of the "Easter manoeuvres" which had been organized for
Sunday, and which had been cancelled at the last moment, late on
Saturday night, by special order of Professor Eoin MacNeill, editor of
the _Irish Volunteer_, which ran: "Owing to the very critical position,
all orders given to Irish Volunteers for to-morrow, Easter Sunday, are
hereby rescinded, and no parades, marches, or other movements of Irish
Volunteers will take place. Each individual Volunteer will obey this
order strictly in every particular."

It was supposed, therefore, that the numbers were due to the new
recruits which had been the outcome of the protest against the
deportation of the Sinn Fein leaders some time previous to this, and
moderate people hoped that the Sinn Fein authorities were about to show
the same discretion in the matter of an armed demonstration in Dublin
which the authorities had shown in the matter of the proposed inclusion
of the military in the St. Patrick's Day parade in Cork.

Possibly they may have had secret information--for they had their spies
in every department--that the long-meditated disarmament had been
determined upon, and immediately decided to anticipate the offensive by
a strong defensive of their own choosing. At any rate, Monday found them
fully prepared, each in his proper place.

Accordingly, on the exact stroke of midday the Volunteers in Sackville
Street were suddenly seen to stop short opposite the Post Office. "I was
outside the building at the time," said an eye-witness of that now
historic event, Mr. E. A. Stoker, the well-known Grafto