VIII

Singing "Soldiers are we whose lives are pledged to Ireland," we had withdrawn from St. Stephen's Green into the College of Surgeons. Only one of our men had been killed, yet this was a retreat, and we knew it. If only we had had enough men to take possession of the Shelbourne Hotel, we need not have yielded the Green. As it was, we wasted no time in mourning, but went to work at once to make ourselves ready for a siege that might last no one knew how long.

Under orders from Commandant Mallin, some of the men began to cut through the walls into adjoining buildings. Others went up on the roof touse their rifles against the British soldiers on top of the Shelbourne. Madam went about everywhere, seeking to find anything that could be of use to us. She discovered sixty-seven rifles, with fifteen thousand rounds of cartridges; also bandoliers and haversacks. All this had belonged, no doubt, to the training corps of the College of Surgeons, and would have been used against us had we not reached the building first.

On the ground floor of the big building were lecture-rooms and a museum; up-stairs other class-rooms, laboratories, and the library. On the third floor were the caretaker's rooms and a kitchen where our first-aid and despatch-girls took possession and cooked for the others as long as anything remained to cook. Lastly came the garret up under the roof. To shoot from the roof itself quickly became impossible, since ourmen were easy targets for the gunners on the Shelbourne. As soon as one of our boys was wounded, we knew they had our range, and decided to cut holes through and directly under the sloping roof. Here we could shoot in perfect safety while remaining unseen.

On Wednesday there was little despatch-bearing to do, so I stood around watching the men up there at work. The countess realized my impatience to be doing my bit, also my hesitation at putting myself forward to ask for permission. Without saying anything to me, she went to Commandant Mallin and told him she thought I could be of use under the roof. He gave his permission at once, and she brought me the answer.

Madam had had a fine uniform of green moleskin made for me. With her usual generosity, she had mine madeof better material than her own. It consisted of kneebreeches, belted coat, and puttees. I slipped into this uniform, climbed up astride the rafters, and was assigned a loophole through which to shoot. It was dark there, full of smoke and the din of firing, but it was good to be in action. I could look across the tops of trees and see the British soldiers on the roof of the Shelbourne. I could also hear their shot hailing against the roof and wall of our fortress, for in truth this building was just that. More than once I saw the man I aimed at fall.

BELT BUCKLE

STAMPS ISSUED BY THE IRISH REPUBLIC

To those who have been following the Great War, reading of thousands and hundreds of thousands attacking one another in open battle or in mile-long trench-warfare, this exchange of shots between two buildings across a Dublin green may seem petty. But to us there could be nothing greater. Every shotwe fired was a declaration to the world that Ireland, a small country but large in our hearts, was demanding her independence. We knew that all over Dublin, perhaps by this time all over Ireland, other groups like ours were filled with the same intensity, the same determination, to make the Irish Republic, no matter how short-lived, a reality of which history would have to take account. Besides, the longer we could keep our tricolor flying over the College of Surgeons, the greater the chance that Irish courage would respond and we should gain recruits.

Whenever I was called down to carry a despatch, I took off my uniform, put on my gray dress and hat, and went out the side door of the college with my message. As soon as I returned, I slipped back into my uniform and joined the firing-squad.

There were a good many of the Fianna boys in the college with us. As usual, their allegiance to Madam would not let them leave her. One of them, Tommie Keenan of Camden Row, was only twelve years old, but was invaluable. He would go out for food and medicine and, because he was so little, never attracted attention, though he wore his green Fianna shirt under his jacket. On Tuesday he came to the conclusion, perhaps with Madam's aid, that he ought to go home and tell his parents what he was doing. Commandant Mallin advised him, just before he left, to take off his green shirt and not wear it again for a while. It was a day or more before he returned, because his father had locked him in his room. We sympathized with the father, for that was just what we had expected him to do. But when a friend came along whopromised to keep guard over Tommy if he was allowed to go for a walk, the boy's chance came. Eluding this friend, he ran the most roundabout way until he arrived where he felt "duty" called him.

The boy already referred to as nearly blind was with us, too. He pleaded so hard to be allowed to use a rifle that the men finally put him at a loophole, where he breathlessly fired shot after shot in the direction of the hotel. Maybe the prayers he murmured gave him success.

Our rations were short, but I do not remember that any one complained. I for one had no appetite for more than a slice of bread or two a day, with a cup of bouillon made from the cubes laid in as part of our necessary ration. The two captured British officers had their meals regularly whether any one elseate or not, and seemed grateful for it.

Every evening fighting would quiet down, and the boys and men—about a hundred, now, through recruits who had joined us—would gather in the largest lecture-hall to sing under the leadership of Jo Connolly, whose brother Sean had fallen the first day in front of Dublin Castle. I can hear them even now:

"Armed for the battle,Kneel we before Thee,Bless Thou our banners,God of the brave!'Ireland is living'—Shout we triumphant,'Ireland is waking—Hands grasp the sword!'"

"Armed for the battle,

Kneel we before Thee,

Bless Thou our banners,

God of the brave!

'Ireland is living'—

Shout we triumphant,

'Ireland is waking—

Hands grasp the sword!'"

They were singing this chant, written by the countess and set to some Polish revolutionary air, on Wednesday evening. I was up-stairs, studying a map ofour surroundings and trying to find a way by which we could dislodge the soldiers from the roof of the Hotel Shelbourne. When Commandant Mallin came in, I asked him if he would let me go out with one man and try to throw a bomb attached to an eight-second fuse through the hotel window. I knew there was a bow-window on the side farthest from us, which was not likely to be guarded. We could use our bicycles and get away before the bomb exploded,—that is, if we were quick enough. At any rate, it was worth trying, whatever the risk.

Commandant Mallin agreed the plan was a good one, but much too dangerous. I pointed out to him that it had been my speed which had saved me so far from machine-gun fire on the hotel roof. It was not that the British were doing us any real harm in the college,but it was high time to take the aggressive, for success would hearten the men in other "forts" who were not having as safe a time of it. He finally agreed, though not at all willingly, for he did not want to let a woman run this sort of risk. My answer to that argument was that we had the same right to risk our lives as the men; that in the constitution of the Irish Republic, women were on an equality with men. For the first time in history, indeed, a constitution had been written that incorporated the principle of equal suffrage. But the Commandant told me there was another task to be accomplished before the hotel could be bombed. That was to cut off the retreat of a British force which had planted a machine-gun on the flat roof of University Church. It was against our rules to use any church, Protestant or Catholic, in our defense, no matter whatadvantage that might give us. But this church, close at hand, had been occupied by the British and was cutting us off from another command with whom it was necessary to keep in communication. In order to cut off the retreat of these soldiers, it would be necessary to burn two buildings. I asked the Commandant to let me help in this undertaking. He consented, and gave me four men to help fire one building, while another party went out to fire the other. It meant a great deal to me that he should trust me with this piece of work, and I felt elated. While I changed once more into my uniform, for the work of war can only be done by those who wear its dress, I could still hear them singing:

"Who fights for Ireland,God guide his blows home!Who dies for Ireland,God give him peace!Knowing our cause just,March we victorious,Giving our hearts' bloodIreland to free!"

"Who fights for Ireland,

God guide his blows home!

Who dies for Ireland,

God give him peace!

Knowing our cause just,

March we victorious,

Giving our hearts' blood

Ireland to free!"

It took only a few moments to reach the building we were to set afire. Councilor Partridge smashed the glass door in the front of a shop that occupied the ground floor. He did it with the butt of his rifle and a flash followed. It had been discharged! I rushed past him into the doorway of the shop, calling to the others to come on. Behind me came the sound of a volley, and I fell. It was as I had on the instant divined. That flash had revealed us to the enemy.

"It's all over," I muttered, as I felt myself falling. But a moment later, when I knew I was not dead, I was sure I should pull through. Before another volley could be fired, Mr. Partridgelifted and carried me into the street. There on the sidewalk lay a dark figure in a pool of blood. It was Fred Ryan, a mere lad of seventeen, who had wanted to come with us as one of the party of four.

"We must take him along," I said.

But it was no use; he was dead.

With help, I managed to walk to the corner. Then the other man who had stopped behind to set the building afire caught up with us. Between them they succeeded in carrying me back to the College of Surgeons.

As we came into the vestibule, Jo Connolly was waiting with his bicycle, ready to go out with me to bomb the hotel. His surprise at seeing me hurt was as if I had been out for a stroll upon peaceful streets and met with an accident.

They laid me on a large table and cut away the coat of my fine, new uniform.I cried over that. Then they found I had been shot in three places, my right side under the arm, my right arm, and in the back on my right side. Had I not turned as I went through that shop-door to call to the others, I would have got all three bullets in my back and lungs and surely been done for.

They had to probe several times to get the bullets, and all the while Madam held my hand. But the probing did not hurt as much as she expected it would. My disappointment at not being able to bomb the Hotel Shelbourne was what made me unhappy. They wanted to send me to the hospital across the Green, but I absolutely refused to go. So the men brought in a cot, and the first-aid girls bandaged me, as there was no getting a doctor that night. What really did distress me was my cough and the pain in my chest. When I tried to keepfrom coughing, I made a queer noise in my throat and noticed every one around me look frightened.

"It's no death-rattle," I explained, and they all had to laugh,—that is, all laughed except Commandant Mallin. He said he could not forgive himself as long as he lived for having let me go out on that errand. But he did not live long, poor fellow! I tried to cheer him by pointing out that he had in reality saved my life, since the bombing plan was much more dangerous.

Soon after I was brought in, the countess and Councilor Partridge disappeared. When she returned to me, she said very quietly:

"You are avenged, my dear."

It seems they had gone out to where Fred Ryan lay, and Partridge, to attract the fire of the soldiers across the street in the Sinn Fein Bank, hadstooped over the dead boy to lift him. There were only two soldiers and they both fired. That gave Madam a chance to sight them. She fired twice and killed both.

They tell me that all next day I was delirious and lay moaning and talking incoherently. It was not the bullets that brought me to this pass, but pneumonia. Even so I am glad I was there and not at a hospital. Later a doctor who was summoned made the mistake of using too much corrosive sublimate on my wounds, and for once I knew what torture is. The mistake took all the skin off my side and back. But Madam is a natural nurse. Among her friends she was noted for her desire to care for them if they fell ill. Some one was almost always in bed at Surrey House; some friend whose eyes might be troubling her to whom the countess wouldread aloud or apply soothing applications; a Fianna boy, or an actress from the Abbey Theater who needed to build up her nerves. Thus I was in good hands, and besides, following my instinct, I ate nothing for the next three days, but drank quantities of water.

PEARSE'S LAST PROCLAMATION

Written under shell and shrapnel fire. (His marveloushandwriting is due to his mastery of the Gaelic script.)

Headquarters, Army of the Irish Republic,General Post OfficeDublin.28thApril, 1916. 9·30, a.m.The Forces of the Irish Republic, which was proclaimed in Dublin on Easter Monday, 24thApril, have been in possession of the central part of the Capital since 12 noon on that day. Up to yesterday afternoon, Headquarters was in touch with all the main outlying positions, and despite furious and almost continuous assaults by the British Forces all those positions were then still being held, and the Commandants in charge were confident of their ability to hold them for a long time.During the course of yesterday afternoon, and evening, the enemy succeeded in cutting our communications with our other positions in the city, and Headquarters is to-day isolated.The enemy has burnt down whole blocks of houses, apparently with the object of giving themselves a clear field for the play of Artillery and field guns against us. We have been bombarded during the evening and night by shrapnel and machine gun fire, but without material damage to our position, which is of great strength.We are busy completing arrangements for the final defence of Headquarters, and are determined to hold it while the buildings last.I desire now, lest I may not have an opportunity later, to pay homage to the gallantry of the Soldiers of Irish Freedom who have during the past four days been writing with fire and steel, the most glorious chapter in the later history of Ireland. Justice can never be done to their heroism, to their discipline, to their gay and unconquerable spirit, in the midst of peril and death.Let me, who have led them into this, speak in my own, and in my fellow-commanders' names, and in the name of Ireland present and to come, their praise, and ask those who come after them to remember them.For four days they have fought and toiled, almost without cessation, almost without sleep, and in the intervals of fighting, they have sung songs of the freedom of Ireland. No man has complained, no man has asked "why?". Each individual has spent himself, happy to pour out his strength for Ireland and for freedom. If they do not win this fight, they will at least have deserved to win it. But win it they will, although they may win it in death. Already they have won a great thing. They have redeemed Dublin from many shames, and made her name splendid among the names of Cities.If I were to mention names of individuals, my list would be a long one.I will name only that of Commandant General James Connolly, Commanding the Dublin division. He lies wounded, but is still the guiding brain of our resistance.If we accomplish no more than we have accomplished, I am satisfied. I am satisfied that we have saved Ireland's honour. I am satisfied that we should have accomplished more, that we should have accomplished the task of enthroning, as well as proclaiming, the Irish Republic as a Sovereign State, had our arrangements for a simultaneous rising of the whole country, with a combined plan as sound as the Dublin plan has been proved to be, been allowed to go through on Easter Sunday. Of the fatal countermanding order which prevented those plans from being carried out, I shall not speak further. Both Eoin MacNeill and we have acted in the best interests of Ireland.For my part, as to anything I have done in this, I am not afraid to face either the judgement of God, or the judgement of posterity.(Signed) P. H. Pearse, Commandant General.Commanding-in-chief the Army of the Irish Republic andPresident of the Provisional Government.

Headquarters, Army of the Irish Republic,General Post OfficeDublin.28thApril, 1916. 9·30, a.m.

The Forces of the Irish Republic, which was proclaimed in Dublin on Easter Monday, 24thApril, have been in possession of the central part of the Capital since 12 noon on that day. Up to yesterday afternoon, Headquarters was in touch with all the main outlying positions, and despite furious and almost continuous assaults by the British Forces all those positions were then still being held, and the Commandants in charge were confident of their ability to hold them for a long time.

During the course of yesterday afternoon, and evening, the enemy succeeded in cutting our communications with our other positions in the city, and Headquarters is to-day isolated.

The enemy has burnt down whole blocks of houses, apparently with the object of giving themselves a clear field for the play of Artillery and field guns against us. We have been bombarded during the evening and night by shrapnel and machine gun fire, but without material damage to our position, which is of great strength.

We are busy completing arrangements for the final defence of Headquarters, and are determined to hold it while the buildings last.

I desire now, lest I may not have an opportunity later, to pay homage to the gallantry of the Soldiers of Irish Freedom who have during the past four days been writing with fire and steel, the most glorious chapter in the later history of Ireland. Justice can never be done to their heroism, to their discipline, to their gay and unconquerable spirit, in the midst of peril and death.

Let me, who have led them into this, speak in my own, and in my fellow-commanders' names, and in the name of Ireland present and to come, their praise, and ask those who come after them to remember them.

For four days they have fought and toiled, almost without cessation, almost without sleep, and in the intervals of fighting, they have sung songs of the freedom of Ireland. No man has complained, no man has asked "why?". Each individual has spent himself, happy to pour out his strength for Ireland and for freedom. If they do not win this fight, they will at least have deserved to win it. But win it they will, although they may win it in death. Already they have won a great thing. They have redeemed Dublin from many shames, and made her name splendid among the names of Cities.

If I were to mention names of individuals, my list would be a long one.

I will name only that of Commandant General James Connolly, Commanding the Dublin division. He lies wounded, but is still the guiding brain of our resistance.

If we accomplish no more than we have accomplished, I am satisfied. I am satisfied that we have saved Ireland's honour. I am satisfied that we should have accomplished more, that we should have accomplished the task of enthroning, as well as proclaiming, the Irish Republic as a Sovereign State, had our arrangements for a simultaneous rising of the whole country, with a combined plan as sound as the Dublin plan has been proved to be, been allowed to go through on Easter Sunday. Of the fatal countermanding order which prevented those plans from being carried out, I shall not speak further. Both Eoin MacNeill and we have acted in the best interests of Ireland.

For my part, as to anything I have done in this, I am not afraid to face either the judgement of God, or the judgement of posterity.

(Signed) P. H. Pearse, Commandant General.Commanding-in-chief the Army of the Irish Republic andPresident of the Provisional Government.

Once a day they allowed me visitors. Every one who came to my room was confident that things were going well. That we were isolated from other "forts" and even from headquarters did not necessarily mean they were losing ground. We were holding out, and our spirits rose high. We believed, too, that by this time the Volunteers outside Dublin had risen. We could not know that, even where they had joined the rising on Easter Monday, the loss of one day had given the British enough time to be on guard, so that in no instance could our men enter thebarracks and seize arms as originally planned.

While I lay there, I could hear the booming of big guns. All of us believed it was the Germans attacking the British on the water. There had been a rumor that German submarines would come into the fight if they learned there was a chance of our winning it. I had heard that report the evening before the rising. Edmond Kent, one of the republican leaders, had been most confident of our success, and when a friend asked him, "What if the British bring up their big guns?" he replied:

"The moment they bring up their big guns, we win."

He did not explain what he meant by this, but I took it that he expected outside aid the minute the British, recognizing our revolt as serious, gave us the dignity of combatants by usingheavy artillery against us. Whatever he meant, the fact remains that when they took this action, they made us a "belligerent" in the world's eyes and gave us the excuse we could so well use—an appeal to the world court as a "small nation," for a place at the coming peace conference.

Sunday morning one of the despatch-girls, white and scared because she had been escorted to our "fort" by British soldiers, came from headquarters to inform Commandant Mallin that a general surrender had been decided on. The Commandant and Madam were in my room at the time, and Madam instantly grew pale.

"Surrender?" she cried. "We'll never surrender!"

Then she begged the Commandant, who could make the decision for our division, not to think of giving in. Itwould be better, she said, for all of us to be killed at our posts. I felt as she did about it, but the girl who had brought the despatch became more and more excited, saying that the soldiers outside had threatened to "blow her little head off" if she did not come out soon with the word they wanted. Possibly they suspected any Irish girl would be more likely to urge resistance than surrender.

Commandant Mallin, to quiet us, I suppose, said he would not surrender unless forced to do so. But he must have decided to give in at once, for in less than an hour an ambulance came to take me to St. Vincent's Hospital, just across the Green.

As they carried me down-stairs, our boys came out to shake my hand. I urged them again and again to hold out. As I said good-by to Commandant Mallin, I had a feeling I should never seehim again. Not that it entered my head for a moment that he would be executed by the British. Despite all our wrongs and their injustices, I did not dream of their killing prisoners of war.

I felt no such dread concerning the countess, though our last words together were about her will. I had witnessed it, and she had slipped it in the lining of my coat. I was to get it to her family at the earliest possible moment. It was fortunate that I did.

My departure was the first move in the surrender. That afternoon all the revolutionists gave up their arms to the British in St. Patrick's Square.

Those first two weeks in St. Vincent's Hospital were the blackest of my life. In that small, white room I was, at first, as much cut off as though in my grave. I had fever, and the doctors and nurses were more worried over my pneumonia than over my wounds, though every time they dressed them I suffered from the original treatment with corrosive sublimate. My greatest anxiety, however, was because I could get no word to my mother in Glasgow. I knew she would think I had been killed.

That was just what happened. The first word she had received since the day I left home was that I was dead; that Ihad been shot in the spine, and left lying on the Dublin pavement for two days. The next rumor that reached her was that I was not dead, but paralyzed. The third report was that the British had sentenced me to fifteen years' imprisonment. Had I not been wounded, the last would probably have been true.

After two weeks I wrote a letter, and the doctor had it forwarded home for me. It had not been easy work writing it, for my right arm was the one that had been wounded. I knew, though, that unless she had word in my own handwriting, my mother might not believe what she read.

Presently news began to drift in to me of trials and executions. I could not get it through my head. Why were these men not treated as prisoners of war? We had obeyed all rules of war and surrendered as formally as anyarmy ever capitulated. All my reports were of death; nothing but death!

At dawn on May 3, the British shot Padraic Pearse, Thomas McDonagh, and old Tom Clarke.

The following day they shot Joseph Plunkett, the brother of Padraic Pearse, and two other leaders, Daly and O'Hanrahan.

The third day John McBride, a man known the world over for his stand in the Boer War, was shot to death. He was the only one killed that day, and we wondered why. What was this British reasoning that determined who should go in company with his fellows and who should go alone?

At length came the turn of the Countess Markievicz. Because she was a woman, they commuted her death-sentence to penal servitude for life. I was very glad; but I knew that, since shehad fought as one of them, she would rather have died with them. Penal servitude! Those words rang like a knell for one who was all energy, who needed people around her, who wanted to serve.

THE ORDER THAT MADE THE SURRENDER OF THE COLLEGE OF SURGEONS INEVITABLE

THE ORDER THAT MADE THE SURRENDEROF THE COLLEGE OF SURGEONS INEVITABLE

In order to prevent the further slaughter of Dublin citizens, and in the hope of saving the lives of our followers now surrounded and hopelessly outnumbered, the members of the Provisional Government present at Head-Quarters have agreed to an unconditional surrender, and the Commandants of the various districts in the City and Country will order their commands to lay down arms.P. H. Pearse29thApril 19163.45 p. m.I agree to these conditions for the men only under my own command in the Moore Street District and for the men in the Stephen's Green Command.James ConnollyApril 29/16On consultation with Commandant Connolly and their officers I have decided to agree to unconditional surrender also.Thomas MacDonagh.

P. H. Pearse29thApril 19163.45 p. m.

I agree to these conditions for the men only under my own command in the Moore Street District and for the men in the Stephen's Green Command.

James ConnollyApril 29/16

On consultation with Commandant Connolly and their officers I have decided to agree to unconditional surrender also.

Thomas MacDonagh.

The British did not shoot any one on Sunday. They let us meditate on all that the past week had done to our leaders. There is no torture so excruciating as suspense. It is the suspense which Ireland has had to endure for generations that has weakened her more than any battles. How we have waited and waited! It has always been hard for us to believe we were not to realize our hopes. Even in these latter years during which Home Rule has loomed large before us, we have not suspected that, in the end, it would become only a parliamentary trick and a delusion. If any one had told me the Sunday before thatall these men were to be shot, I should not have believed them. Our bitter belief has been forced upon us.

On Monday the British began it again. This time it was Michael Mallin they stood against a wall and shot. I remembered how, when I was so ill at the College of Surgeons, he had been gentle with me. He always had tried to ease the discomforts of his men. You would never have guessed by looking at him, he was so quiet and restrained, that he had been waiting twenty years for the day which would make him a commandant over Irish soldiers. He told me that, as a boy of fourteen, he had enlisted in the British army to get experience with which to fight Great Britain. When he was stationed in India, he said, he had lain awake night after night, planning how some day he could put his militaryknowledge at Ireland's service. Six days he served Ireland; eight days he lay in prison; now he was dead!

Later his widow came to see me. She brought me the note-book he used when writing the despatches I carried. She brought me, besides, some small bits of Irish poplin he had woven himself. She did not break down; she seemed exalted. It was the same with all the wives of those shot, and with the mother of Padraic and William Pearse. You would have thought they had been greatly honored, that their dignity was equal to bearing it.

Yet they all had terrible stories of cruelty to tell me. Kilmainham Prison was a grim waiting-room for death. In addition, the court-martial never lasted long enough for any one to feel he had been fairly tried and judged. I heard all the prison sentences, over a hundredthat first week! Most of them were for long terms, and five for life. Councilor Partridge was given a fifteen-year sentence that afterward was commuted to ten.

It is not the same thing to read of executions and sentences in the press and to hear of them from the lips of friends,—the wives, mothers, and daughters of the men executed or sentenced for life. To feel we had failed in our purpose was enough to make us brood; but to know that never again would these men sing rebel songs together or tell of their hopes—

At length Norah Connolly and her sister came to see me. They told me of their father's last hours; how, because of his wound that already had brought him close to death, he had to be strapped into a chair to face the firing-squad. I thought of gentle Mrs. Connolly sayinggood-by to her husband, knowing all the while what was about to take place!

Some of the first-aid girls who had been in prison for fifteen days came to visit me, too. We compared notes. I learned then how Chris Caffrey had been stripped and searched by British soldiers to her shame, for she was a modest girl. But she had eaten her despatch before they dragged her off the street where she had been bicycling. I heard, too, how Chris had been almost prevented from reaching headquarters by a crowd of poor women gathered about the post-office for their usual weekly "separation allowance." Their husbands were all fighting in France or Flanders for the British. They would not get their allowance this week, and were terror-stricken, crowding about the post-office and crying and shouting hysterically. Chris, as we calledChristine, had to fire her revolver at the ground before they would make way for her.

Next followed the story of Francis Sheehy Skeffington, one of the few men in Dublin we could go to for advice about the law when we had any plan to carry out. He had been shot without a trial, they said; without even knowing, when called out into the little courtyard, that he was about to be killed. And he had hadnothing to do with the rising! He always had been against the use of force. When he was arrested, after a day spent in trying to get a committee of safety together because the police had disappeared, his wife did not even know where he was. She had no word of his death until a day after he was buried in quicklime, the burial of a criminal!

Ah, how the stories of Belgian atrocities which we had heard from the lipsof the Archbishop of Michlin when the Great War broke out, paled beside this one fortnight in Dublin! We did not know when it would end or how. There ensued a reign of terror in all Irish homes, whether the men or women had had anything to do with the rising or not. For both soldiers and police were now given power to arrest any one they pleased. Several hundred men were put in prison under no charge, nor were any charges ever preferred in many cases.

The women, too! Helen Maloney and Dr. Katherine Lynn, whose motor Madam had used that night in St. Stephen's Green and whose bicycle I had been riding, were both arrested Easter Monday and taken to Dublin Castle. Miss Maloney was discovered a few hours later with the lock half off her door, her fingers bleeding pitifully from attempts to get out. Next they weretaken to Kilmainham jail, where for fifteen days those two women, with eighty others, were kept in a room completely lacking any sanitary arrangements. We used to shudder at stories of such deeds, which we then believed could happen only in Siberia. Dr. Lynn is famous for her surgical skill. She is one of the Irish doctors to whom the British send their worst war cripples for treatment, and is far more successful than they in treating such cases. Many visitors to Dublin have seen Miss Maloney on the stage of the Abbey Theater and recognized her talent. Dr. Lynn was deported to Bath; Miss Maloney was sent to the Aylesbury Prison, and kept there a year. Never once during that time was any charge preferred against her.

Little Tommy Keenan of Camden Row had, so he thought, the goodfortune to be put in prison with sixty of the Fianna when our men surrendered the College of Surgeons. But, much to their chagrin, at the end of two weeks the boys were released. Did they scurry away to grow up into better British subjects? Not at all! Tommy lined them up in front of the jail and led them off down the street singing "The Watch on the Rhine" at the top of their lungs.

There was no end to the stories I heard as I lay there in the hospital. Stories of heroism and stories of disaster followed one another, each strengthening my belief that the courage and honor of the heroic days of Ireland were still alive in our hearts. Perhaps it is for this we should love our enemies: when they cleave with their swords the heart of a brave man, they lay bare the truth of life.

There came a day when I could no longer endure lying alone in my room, thinking of all that had happened for this reason or that. The nurses had been very kind to me. Some of them were in sympathy with the Sinn Fein movement, while all of them felt the horror of the executions. There were times when I could rise above this horror and cheer them, too, by singing a rebel song. I had interested them, besides, in suffrage work we had been doing in Glasgow, where for several years eleven hundred militants had done picketing and the like.

Finally, however, I persuaded them to let me move into the public ward, whereI could see other women patients and talk a little. There were about twenty women and girls in the ward. Nine of them, who had nothing to do with the rising, had been wounded by British soldiers. The nurses insisted this was accidental. But the women themselves would not agree to that explanation, nor did I, for I recalled the Red Cross girls being shot at,—a thing I had seen with my own eyes. I told the nurses I had seen the British firing at our ambulances in the belief, no doubt, that we were doing what we had caught them at—transporting troops from one part of Dublin to another in ambulances. Sometimes I felt sorry to have to make those nurses see facts as they were, instead of helping them keep what few illusions still remained about their men in khaki. But I was glad when I could tell them what I had just heard of De Vallera's daring.With a handful of men, he had prevented two thousand of the famous Sherwood Foresters coming through lower Mount Street to attack one of our positions. Or, again, it did me good to relate the story of the seventeen-year-old lad who single-handed had captured a British general. The sequel to that tale, however, was not very cheerful, for the same general had sat at the court-martial, and gave the boy who before had had power of life and death over him, a ten year sentence.

There were three women in the ward who had all been struck by the same bullet: a mother, her daughter, and a cousin. They had been friendly to the British soldiers, had fed them because, as the mother told me, her husband and son were in the trenches fighting for Great Britain. These three women hadbeen at their window, looking with curiosity into the street, when the very soldier they had just fed turned suddenly and shot them. One had her jawbone broken, the second her arm pierced, and the third was struck in the breast. They were all serious wounds which kept them in bed. While I was still in the ward, the two men of this family came back from Flanders on leave, only to find no one at home. The neighbors directed them to the hospital. I hate to think how those men looked when they learned why their women wore bandages. They told me that during Easter Week the Germans put up opposite the trenches of the Irish Brigade a placard that read:

"The military are shooting down your wives and children in Dublin."

But the Irish soldiers had not believed it.

I asked them if it was true, as alleged, that in answer to the placard, the Irish Brigade had sung "Rule, Britannia." They were indignant at the idea. They might be wearing khaki, they said, but they never yet had sung "Rule, Britannia." When the day came for them to return to the front, the father wanted to desert, dangerous as that would be, while the son was eager to go back to the trenches.

"This time," he said to me, "we'll not be killing Germans!"

When rumors came later of a mutiny in the Irish regiment, I wondered to myself if these two men were at the bottom of it.

Stories of atrocities poured into our ears when the Germans invadedBelgium. Now we had to hear them from our own people, and now we had to believe them. They were stories as cruel as any heard since the days of the Island Magee massacre.

In the House of Commons shortly after the rising, the cabinet was questioned if it were true that the body of a boy in the uniform of the Irish Volunteers had been unearthed in the grounds of Trinity College, with the marks of twenty bayonet wounds upon him.

"No," was the response, "there were not twenty; there were only nineteen"!

The body in question was that of Gerald Keogh, one of a family passionately devoted to the cause of Irish freedom. He had been sent to Kimmage to bring back fifty men. He went scouting ahead of them, just as I had done when I brought in the men from the Leeson Street bridge. As he waspassing Trinity College, held by the British, he was shot down and swiftly captured. It is generally understood he was asked for information, and that, upon his refusing to answer, the soldiers tried to force it from him by prodding him with their bayonets. I might add that the fifty men with him were not attacked as they went by.

This boy's brother was also captured by British soldiers, who decided to hang him then and there. He begged them to shoot him, but they fastened a noose around his neck and led him to a lamp-post. Fortunately an officer came along at that moment and rescued him. Even children were not safe from being terrorized by the soldiers, as Mr. Dillon later brought out in the House of Commons.

There also were murders in North King Street. Fourteen men who hadnothing to do with the rising, were killed in their homes by British soldiers who buried them in their cellars, while others looted the houses. The house in Leinster Road was pillaged, and the soldiers had the effrontery to sell the books, fine furniture, and paintings on the street in front of the dwelling.

I had been in the hospital now about five weeks, and had been told I might go in a few days to visit friends in the city if I would promise to return every day to have my wounds dressed. Then one morning I was informed there was a "G-man," as we call government detectives, waiting down-stairs to see me. He had been coming every day to the hospital, it seems, to learn if I was yet strong enough to go to jail. Evidently he had decided that I was, for he told me I must accompany him to Bridewell Prison.

When I went up to the ward to say good-by and get my things, I found the nurses terribly upset. You see, it brought the Irish question right home to that hospital. They went to him in a body and tried to beg me off, but he insisted on his rights, and away I went despite tears and protestations.

This was the first time I had been out, so naturally I felt queer and weak. Nor was I pleased with my companion. He had a fat, self-satisfied face; in fact, was not at all the handsome, keen-looking detective you see on the cover of a dime novel. Besides, he wastoopolite. He thought, I suppose, that this would be the best way to get me to answer the hundred and one questions he began to ask me. I told him I might answer questions about myself, but I certainly should not answer any concerning the countess or my other friends.

This response kept him quiet for a block or two. Then he turned suddenly and asked me about two girls from Glasgow who had come to Ireland at the same time that I did. I just walked along as though I had not heard a word, and so we proceeded in silence the rest of the way.

When we entered the vestibule of the prison, an old official immediately began to catechize me. I refused to answer a single one of his questions, not even as to my name. Instead I pointed to the "G-man."

"Ask him," I said. "He knows all about me, and can tell you if he wants to."

The detective's face grew red, but he did answer the old man's questions. It was very interesting to me to find that he knew who my parents were; that I had been born twelve miles fromGlasgow; that I had gone to different schools which he named, and that I had attended the training college for teachers. He told just where I had been teaching, and how well known I was as a militant suffragette. But what he didnotsay was even more interesting. He never declared that I had been a combatant in the rising. I wondered inwardly if he thought I had been only a despatch-rider or a first-aid girl. I was exceedingly glad I had let him answer for me as, taking it for granted they knew all about me, I might have given myself away.

The old man finally called the matron and told her to treat me well, as I was not a "drunk or disorderly" person, to which class this prison is given over, but a military prisoner. Indeed she did treat me well. Since there was nothing on which to sit down, she kindly openeda cell and let me sit on the wooden plank they call a bed, and stare at the wooden head-board. I did not look forward much to such accommodations, with my wounds still painful. She talked to me, too, very sympathetically. Sometimes it was hard for us to hear each other, as there were many drunken men singing and cursing. Being drunk, they were able to forget that Ireland was under martial law, and cursed the British loudly or sang disrespectful songs.

The detective had gone out, and those in the jail seemed waiting to hear from him before they picked out my permanent cell. After about two hours, he came back. From where I sat, I could see him bend over the old man and whisper to him. Then he walked over to me.

"Come," he said, "we'll go now."

"Go where?" I asked.

"To the hospital," he replied, "or anywhere else you wish. You are free."

The matron was as pleased as if she were a friend of mine. I was too amazed to know what to think. I told the detective, however, that as I did not know this part of Dublin, I could not find my way back to the hospital without his company. Off we went again, and he paid my carfare, for which I thanked him.

In the sky overhead were aëroplanes that the British kept hovering over Dublin to impress the people.

"Are those the little things with which you fight the Zeppelins?" I asked my detective.

This remark hurt his feelings. He was not British, he informed me, but a good Redmondite. How embarrassed he was when I asked him if he liked arresting Irish who had shown theirlove of Ireland by being willing to die for her and, what sometimes seemed worse to me, going into an English prison for life. After that we did not talk any more until he said good-by to me at the hospital door.

The nurses were not as surprised to see me back as I had expected them to be. They had known I was returning, for it was the head doctor who had telephoned the authorities at Dublin Castle to tell them, with a good deal of heat, that I was in no condition to begin a prison sentence. That must have been what the "G-man" had whispered to the old official at Bridewell Prison.

After two weeks more, I left the hospital and went to stay with a friend in Dublin. It seemed very strange to me not to be going back to Surrey House. How everything had changed! As soon as I was strong enough, I went around to see where the fighting had destroyed whole streets. Dublin was scarred and, it seemed to me, very sick. I recalled momentarily that a teacher of mine had once said the name Dublin meant "the Black Pool."

The building where I had first met Thomas McDonagh, the Volunteer headquarters, had a "to let" sign in itswindows. Who would want to engage in business in a place where such high hopes had been blasted?

Liberty Hall was a shell, empty of everything but memories.

Around the post-office, all other buildings had been leveled, but the great building stood there like a monument to Easter Week.

The windows stared vacantly from the house on Leinster Road. Everything had been taken from it. The looters must have had a merry time. Hundreds of houses had been thus sacked, for the British soldiers had lived up to that Tommy whose words make Kipling's famous song:

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