going to treat them like the
Huns would.

I heard one young Lancashire Tommy say: "The poor beggars! They only
obeyed the word of command, and they fought like heroes," but he was cut
short by an English officer with an Oxford drawl: "Damn sympathizing
with the swine! I'd shoot all these Irish rebels down like rats--every
one of them--if I had my way."

The words struck me forcibly at the time, for I knew that it only needed
this to make martyrs of every one of them.

"England has learnt how fatal that mistake has been," I replied. "We're
surely not going to set Ireland back a hundred years by such a pogrom as
followed '98...."

Meanwhile, though in Dublin we knew very little, the movement in the
provinces had long since been crushed: indeed, it never appears to have
had much chance of success.

It was said that some delay or interruption in the sending of the signal
message was the cause. Others say that the South had orders to await the
landing of arms from the German cruiser which brought over Sir Roger
Casement, and which was sunk on April 21st--which seems the more
probable.

This news, however, seems, for mysterious reasons, to have been kept
from the general public, for it was not till the Monday evening, at
10.23, that this announcement was made, and, reaching Ireland on the
morrow of the announcement of the triumph of the Republic in the
capital, must have shown the waverers that the rising was bound to end
in a fiasco--a fact which they possibly realized better than the men in
Dublin, who to the very end seem to have expected something to turn up.

It was generally expected that Cork would rise _en masse_, for the Sinn
Feiners had been organizing the city and county for upwards of three
years--in most cases the gradually increasing forces being drilled by
ex-soldiers privately, so that when they eventually appeared publicly
on parade and in full uniform, marching through the streets in a body
four deep, with rifles on their shoulders, everyone realized that the
movement had amply justified itself.

Every Sunday, public parades showed a growing strength that at times
alarmed the authorities to no little degree.

The mass demonstration at Limerick about a year ago still further
revealed their strength, and from that moment to the fateful Easter week
the organization, already considerable in point of numbers, perfected
itself by the addition of ammunition, uniforms, equipment, and financial
aid.

Ev