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possible to conduct any rebellion, and many high and chivalrous things were done by them and their followers. They strove to fight, as closely as they could, in accordance with the laws of civilized warfare. But the killing of these policemen at the castle and the Unitarian church were acts of murder, for these civil servants were unarmed, defenseless, while their opponents carried loaded rifles. I believe, indeed, that much of what we call atrocity in warfare, civil or international, is largely the result of fright and nervous strain, the panic act of men who are "rattled"; and it is very probable that the murder of the policemen was due to an attack of nerves. But whatever the cause of it may have been, it stained a singularly clean record. The behavior of the rebels to their prisoners was exemplary. An old colonel who was in their hands for the better part of a week subsequently stated that he had been treated with exceptional kindness, and a subaltern who was interned in the post-office asserted that his captors were very considerate to him.

It was while I was looking at the pool of congealed blood that I saw Francis Sheehy Skeffington. I had known him fairly well for some time. He was a man of immense energy and vitality. Once he walked from Dublin into Wicklow and back, covering fifty miles in one day. His ⚫ honesty was superlative, and his courage was leonine. I think of him as a man overruled by intellect. He was governed by logic, and he seemed incapable of understanding that life is a wayward thing, that men are moody, that humanity cannot be scheduled or set out in terms of an equation; and this submission of his to intellect robbed him of any capacity to act practically in affairs. Had he been a witty man, he would have resembled Bernard Shaw. But he was not a witty man; he was almost totally devoid of a sense of humor. I think, too, he was completely devoid of any feeling for tradition, any sense of reverence. Once when I was living in a Welsh village I met him. I went with him one day to see a cromlech

outside the village, and when we reached it, he looked at it for a few moments, and then, to my disgust, took a bill out of his pocket and stuck it into a crack in the stones. "I may as well do little propaganda," he said. The bill had "Votes for Women" on it. But when all the small irritations one had in his presence were accounted for, there remained this, that he was a man of great integrity and courage, and men of integrity and courage are so rare in the world that it is a calamity to have lost this man in the miserable way in which he was lost.

He came up to me, and we talked about the rebellion. I was full of anger, because I saw in it the wreck of the slowly maturing plans for the better ordering of Irish life; but his emotion was different.

"I'm against all this fighting," he said. "More and more I am inclining toward the Tolstoian position." He spoke of the rebellion as "folly, but it 's noble folly," and declared that it was a hopeless enterprise. He went off, walking in that habitual quick, nervous way of his, which seemed to indicate that he could never walk with sufficient swiftness. I went home, and sat in the window, looking out on the park and the passing people. The dusk gathered about the trees in the green, and a film of blue mist enveloped us. Behind the College of Surgeons, which faced my side of the green, the setting sun sent shafts of golden light shimmering up the heavens. There was hardly any wind, and the tricolor on the college fluttered listlessly. The evening became quiet. The crowds which had moved about the city all day in a holiday mood, treating the rebellion as a jolly entertainment provided. by benevolent persons for their amusement, had dispersed to their homes, carrying with them not the mood of merriment, but the mood of alarm, of anxious anticipation.

One could hardly have felt otherwise then. All day the rebels had been in possession of the city. The Government seemed to have thrown up the sponge. There was not a policeman to be seen, or

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a soldier or any person in authority. At ten o'clock that morning there had been a Government and policemen and soldiers; at eleven o'clock all these had disappeared. There was looting in O'Connell Street, some of it extraordinarily ludicrous. There was one looter who had stolen a dress-suit from a shop near O'Connell Bridge. He went into an abandoned tram-car, stripped his rags off, and then put on the dress-suit. When he reappeared, swaggering up and down the street, he was wearing brown boots, a dress-suit, a Panama hat, and he was carrying a lady's sunshade. The rebels tried to prevent looting. I saw them making. the attempts; but their efforts were ineffectual, and all that day (Monday) and all Tuesday the looting went on ridiculously.

Although the Government had mysteriously vanished, and there were no policemen to arrest looters, one did not feel that victory was with the rebels, nor did they themselves think victory was with them. That anxious, waiting look had marked. the rebels' faces all day, and now something of dread came to the larking crowd; and as the night fell, the jokes ceased, the

At

laughter died out, and silence came. seven o'clock the streets were nearly empty. I looked out of my window and saw shadow-shapes moving swiftly homeward, huddling close to the houses. The rebel sentries still guarded the gate of the green which faced toward Merrion Street, and through the gloaming I could detect the figures of boys and women hurrying about their business in the camp. A cab came down the east side of the green, and the sentries challenged the driver; but he would not stop, though they called "Halt!" a dozen times. Then they fired on him. The horse went down instantly, and the driver, abandoning it, leaped from the box of his cab and flew down Merrion Street. The poor beast, sprawling on its haunches, tried to struggle to its feet, but fell back as often as it rose. While it lay there, struggling and kicking, a motor-car came down that side of the green, and the driver of it, too, was challenged, and he, also, refused to halt, and again the sentries fired. I was leaning out of the window to see what happened, and I laughed, for the man who was in the car with the driver yelled out the moment he was hit: "Oh, I'm dead! I'm dead!"

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The car stopped suddenly, grating harshly on the roadway, so that one's blood curdled for a few seconds. Then the wounded man was taken out. The sentries gathered round him. "Why did n't you stop when you were told?" they said reproachfully, and added, "Take him. to Vincents'," the hospital a little way up. the street. While they were supporting him toward the hospital, the man went on moaning: "Oh, I'm dead! I'm dead!" It was the worst imitation of death I had ever witnessed. They did not take him to Vincents'. They changed their minds, and took him into the green and treated him there. His wound was obviously slight; he could not have yelled so lustily or have walked so well as he did if it had been serious. There was no dignity in him, only a foolish bravado that speedily. turned to squealing; and so one laughed at him.

After that there was a queer silence in the green. In the distance one heard occasional rifle-firing, but here there was this ominous quietness. It became difficult to see, and so I closed the shutters; but before I did so, I looked toward the wounded horse. It was lying in the middle of the street and was not making any movement. "Thank God, it 's dead!" I said to myself, and then I drew the shutters to.

There was a dreadful feeling of strain in the house, and I moved about restlessly. I got out the manuscript of a play on which I am working and began to revise it, but I could not continue at it long. I tried to read a book by H. G. Wells, called "An Englishman Looks at the World." I had opened it at the chapter entitled "The Common Sense of Warfare," but I found that the war outside proved conclusively that there is no common sense in warfare, so I put the book down and tried to play a game of patience. I played three games, and then I went to bed.

I slept in short dozes that were more exhausting than if I had not slept at all. The desultory rifle-fire had increased during the night, and it seemed to me that

shooting was proceeding from the Shelbourne Hotel. At four o'clock I got up and looked out of the window. I was sleeping in the front of the house, and I had left the shutters of my bedroom open. It was not quite light enough for me, who have poor sight, to distinguish things clearly, but I could see a huddled heap lying in front of the gate where the sentries had been a few hours before. And the horse was not dead. While I looked, it made a feeble struggle to rise, and then fell back again. "Why don't they kill it?" I said to myself, and I went back to But I did not sleep. There were people moving about in the next room, fidgeting and fidgeting. I got up and began to dress, and while I was doing so I heard the sound of heavy boots on the pavement below, echoing oddly in that silence; and then I heard shots, followed by a low moan.

bed.

One's mind works in a queer way in moments of unusual happening. I knew that some one had been shot in the street outside my home, and if I had been asked before the thing happened what I should be likely to do, I think I should never have guessed correctly. I stood there counting the dying man's moans. He said, "Oh!" four times, and then he died. I went to the window and looked out. It was now about six o'clock, and I could see plainly. The huddled heap outside the gates of the green was the body of a dead Sinn Feiner. The horse in the roadway was now quite still. Just off the pavement, in front of the door of my home, lay the body of an old man, a laborer, evidently, who had been stumping to his work. I suppose he had not realized that the rebellion was a serious one, and had started off on the usual routine of his life; and then Death had caught him suddenly. and stretched him in the road in a strangely easy attitude.

I came down-stairs, and the maids gave me breakfast, apologizing because there was no milk. It seemed to them that one could not drink tea without milk. These minds of ours are amazing instruments. Outside the door lay the body of an old

man; a little farther off, wearing a fawncolored overcoat, lay the body of a dead Sinn Feiner; at the corner of the street a horse had died in pain; and we were wondering about milk. Had the milkman funked?

I THINK it was between eight and nine o'clock that the ambulance came and took away the two dead men. The horse was dragged, I do not know how, to the pavement, and it lay there, offensive to eye and nostril, for a week. People came to one and said, "Have you seen the dead horse?" In whatever way conversation began, always it seemed to end with that question, "Have you seen the dead horse?"

I remember now standing with a friend. on the stairs, so that my eyes were on a level with the fanlight over the hall-door, and looking into the bushes just inside the green railings. I could see a young Sinn Feiner, rifle in hand, crawling on the ground; and then the soldiers in the Shelbourne saw him and let a volley at him, and he rose and ran, and we saw him no

more.

Later on people came out of their houses and began to walk about. No one was allowed to cross the road to look into the green, and it was impossible to say whether any Sinn Feiners remained in it. The foliage obscured the view. There were rumors that many of the Sinn Feiners had been killed in the night, and that those who remained had fled from the green and taken refuge with their comrades in the College of Surgeons; but there was no confirmation of these rumors, and it is doubtful whether they were

true.

Feiners had been busy. Each of the streets running at right angles to O'Connell Street was barricaded, in most instances ineffectively. Barbed wire was stretched across O'Connell Street in such a way as to form a barrier on each side of the general post-office. And on Tuesday, as on Monday, one saw the pale, "rattled," and very tired-looking young rebels preparing for attack. On the other side of the barbed wire, beyond the Nelson pillar, were some dead horses that had been killed while being ridden by soldiers One heard rumors of desperate fighting in other parts of Dublin. Some of the veterans' corps, who had been drilling in the mountains on Monday, had been shot dead by Sinn Feiners when returning home in the evening. The lord lieutenant, the rumor ran, had been taken prisoner, and was now immured in Liberty Hall. The wildest talk was being uttered. It was said that the pope had committed suicide on hearing of the rebellion. It was said that Archbishop Walsh, the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, had killed himself. It was said that the Orangemen were marching on Dublin in support of the Sinn

Toward ten o'clock the streets filled. A few soldiers had been smuggled by back ways into the Shelbourne Hotel, and these commanded St. Stephen's Green. Other soldiers, few in number, were stationed in various parts of the city; but to all intents and purposes Dublin was as completely in the hands of the rebels on Easter Tuesday as it was on Easter Monday.

I went down to O'Connell Street and found that during the night the Sinn

Feiners.

It was on Easter Tuesday that the worst looting took place. Men and women and children surged up from the foulest slums in Europe and rifled the shops, stripping them almost bare. Some harsh things have been said about the looting, perhaps no harsher than ought to have been said, but I doubt whether in similar circumstances in any city in the world there would have been so little looting as there was in Dublin on those two days. One tries to imagine what London would have been like if it had suddenly been completely abandoned for two days to the mercy of the mob. I think a Whitechapel mob would have sacked London in that time.

While I was standing in O'Connell Street, Francis Sheehy Skeffington came up to me. He had half a dozen walkingsticks under his arm, and he said to me: "I'm trying to form a special constabulary to prevent looting. Your 'll do for

a visit to Belfast on official affairs, and was making ready to start when the news came to the viceregal lodge that the Sinn Feiners had revolted. There was a racemeeting at Fairy House, and many of the officers and soldiers were there. Very few troops were stationed in Dublin, and many men were on leave. It is said in Dublin that if the rebels had known, they could have taken Trinity College and the headquarters of the Irish command with ease, there were so few persons on the premises to defend them. Easter Monday is a bank-holiday, and therefore the shops and business offices were closed.

That was the state of Dublin when suddenly a small body of armed men came out of Liberty Hall and marched along Abbey Street into O'Connell Street and thence to the general post-office. Simultaneously other men marched to strategic points such as Westland Row railway station and the road leading to Kingstown, along which troops from England would be obliged to pass. Another company of men set off to take Dublin Castle, where some harassed officials, as I have stated, were wondering what they should do to cope with the rebellion that they believed to be likely to take place on Whit Monday. The Countess Marckevitz led a company of men and boys and women and girls to St. Stephen's Green and the College of Surgeons. Considerable knowledge of strategy was displayed by the rebels, together with some strategic ineptitude. It was, for example, extremely foolish to seize St. Stephen's Green Park, which was exposed on every side to attack, and had to be abandoned on Easter Tuesday, when the soldiers arrived and began. operations.

All the men were disposed at the points of vantage, and about eleven o'clock on the morning of Easter Monday the rebellion began. The post-office was seized, St. Stephen's Green Park was occupied, the College of Surgeons was entered, and private houses on roads of consequence were taken. The attempt to seize Dublin Castle failed after the policeman on guard outside it was murdered; and the rebels

then took the offices of the Dublin "Daily Express," which are near the castle, and ejected the reporters and staff from it.

THERE was to be a matinée at the Abbey Theater on Easter Monday. We were to produce Mr. W. B. Yeats's little vision. of Ireland, "Kathleen ni Houlihan," together with a new play by a new author, "The Spancel of Death" by Mr. T. H. Nally. There is something odd in that conjunction of plays, something almost anticipatory of what was about to happen; for Kathleen ni Houlihan, the poor old woman, is the figure of Ireland dispossessed and calling to her children to regain her inheritance for her.

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"What is it you want?" the young man says to Kathleen, the daughter of Houlihan, when she comes to his home on the evening of his marriage.

"My four beautiful fields," she answers, "and the hope of driving the stranger out of my house."

I had gone down to the theater from my home in St. Stephen's Green about nine o'clock that morning so that I might deal with my correspondence before the matinée began, and while I was working in my office a stage-hand came to me and said that he thought we would not be able to hold a performance. I said "Why?" He replied:

"I think there's a rebellion or something on. The Sinn Feiners are out." I laughed.

"Listen!" he said, and I listened. I could hear distinctly the dull sound of rifle-firing.

"Oh, that 's only some one skylarking," I answered. But it was n't skylarking.

A man came into the theater while I was wondering about the thing. He was pale and agitated.

"I've just seen a man killed," he said brokenly.

"Is it true?" I interrupted.

He nodded his head.

"I was outside the castle," he went on. "The policeman went up to stop them, and one of them put up a rifle and blew his brains out. The unfortunate man!"

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