Glasgow contingent of the British army, he would slip across the same
night to Ireland, and go to Kimmage, where a camp was maintained for
these boys. While the British military authorities were hunting for them
in Scotland and calling them "slackers," they were drilling and
practising at the target, or making ammunition for a cause they believed
in and for which they were ready to die.
Presently news came from Dublin that James Connolly had written a play
entitled, "Under which Flag?" We heard also that when it was produced,
it had a great effect upon the public. In this play the hero, during the
last act, chooses the flag of the republic and the final curtain falls.
Some one told Mr. Connolly he ought to write another act to show what
happened afterward. His reply was that another act would have to be
written by "all of us together."
I know that many people in this country have seen the Irish Players and
felt their work was a great contribution to the drama, but I doubt if
any one here can realize what it means to see upon the stage a play
dealing with your hopes and fears just at a time when one or the other
are about to be realized. For ten years the world has watched with
interest as these plays were staged, as poetry appeared which seemed to
have a new note in it. The world called it a "Celtic Revival." England,
too, was interested, for these Irish playwrights, poets, and painters
served to stimulate her own artists. What if some of the sagas, revived
by archæologists, _did_ picture Irish heroism? What if the theme of play
or poem _was_ a free Ireland? What if school-boys under a Gaelic name
_did_ play at soldiering?
"Dangerous?" some one asked.
"Nonsense!" retorted mighty England. "Would poets, pedagogues, and
dreamers dare to lead the Irish people against the imperial power that
had dominated them for centuries? Unthinkable!"
England has never understood us so little as in these last ten years.
Our pride was growing tremendously--pride not in what we _have_, but in
what we _are_. The Celtic Revival was only an expression of this new
pride.
It was on the eighteenth of April that a member of the Dublin town
council discovered that the British meant to seize all arms and
ammunition of the Irish Volunteers and Irish Citizen Army. History was
repeating itself. It was on an eighteenth of April that American
colonists discovered the British intention of seizing _their_ arms and
ammunition at Concord. In both cases revolt was made inevitable by this
action.
What the reason was that led immediately to such an order being given to
the British military authorities in Dublin, I do not know. It had to do
with conscription, of course, and it may have been quickened by the
resistance of the Irish Citizen Army to the police. Madam told me that,
a short time before, the police had attempted one noon to raid Liberty
Hall while they supposed the place was empty. By the merest accident,
she and Mr. Connolly, with one or two others, were still there. The
object of the raid was to get possession of the press on which was
printed "The Workers' Republic," a paper published at the hall by Mr.
Connolly.
When the first members of the police force entered, Connolly asked them
if they had a warrant. They had none. He told them they could not come
in without one. At the same time the countess quietly drew her revolver
and as quietly pointed it in their direction in a playful manner. They
understood her, however, and quickly withdrew to get their warrant.
Immediately Connolly sent an order for the Citizen Army to mobilize. How
they came! On the run, slipping into uniform coats as they ran; several
from the tops of buildings where they were at work, others from
underground. More than one, thinking this an occasion of some
seriousness, instantly threw up their jobs.
By the time the police returned with their warrant, the Irish Citizen
Army was drawn up around Liberty Hall, ready to defend it. It was not
raided.
Mr. Connolly showed me a copy of the secret order when I arrived on
Holy Thursday. It read:
The following precautionary measures have been sanctioned by the
Irish Office on recommendation of the General Officer commanding
the forces in Ireland. All preparations will be made to put these
measures in force immediately on receipt of an order issued from
the Chief Secretary's Office, Dublin Castle, and signed by the
Under Secretary and the General Officer commanding the forces in
Ireland.
First, the following persons will be put under arrest: All members
of the Sinn Fein National Council, the Central Executive Irish Sinn
Fein Volunteer County Board, Irish Sinn Fein Volunteers, Executive
Committee National Volunteers, Coisda Gnotha Committee, Gaelic
League. See list A3 and 4, and supplementary list A2.
I interrupt the order to emphasize the fact that we were all listed, and
that the "Sinn Fein" organization seemed to attract most attention from
the authorities. Indeed, after it was all over, the rising was often
called the "Sinn Fein Revolt." The Sinn Fein was an organization which
had become a menace to Great Britain because of its tactics of _passive
resistance_. The words Sinn Fein, as already stated, mean "ourselves
alone," and the whole movement was for an Irish Ireland.
The Sinn Feiners are likened to the "Black Hand" or other anarchistic
groups by those who read of them as leaders of a "revolt." As a matter
of fact, they were, from the first, the literary, artistic, and economic
personalities who started the Celtic Revival. Arthur Griffiths, who is
not given enough credit for the passion with which he conceived the idea
of working for Ireland as Hungarians worked for Hungary, published a
little weekly magazine in which the first of the new poetry appeared. It
appealed to the deepest instincts in us; it was a revolt of the spirit,
clothing itself in practical deed.
But it was not a negative program. The refusal to do or say or think in
the Anglicized way, as was expected of us, held in it loyalty to
something fine and free, the existence of which we believed in because
we had read of it in the history of Ireland in our sagas. We were not a
people struggling up into an untried experience, but a people regaining
our kingdom, which at one time in the history of mankind had been called
"great" wherever it was known of or rumored.
This was the feeling that animated the groups listed by British military
men as the "Sinn Fein National Council" and "Central Executive and
Coisda Gnotha Committee of the Gaelic League," but which to an outsider
cannot, without explanation, give any idea of the fire and fervor
implanted in committee and council.
But to return to the document. It went on:
An order will be issued to the inhabitants of the city to remain in
their homes until such time as the Competent Military Authority may
otherwise direct and permit.
Pickets chosen from units of Territorial Forces will be at all
points marked on maps 3 and 4. Accompanying mounted patrols will
continuously visit all points and report every hour.
The following premises will be occupied by adequate forces and all
necessary measures used without need of reference to Headquarters:
First, premises known as Liberty Hall, Beresford Place;
No. 6 Harcourt Street, Sinn Fein Building;
No. 2 Dawson Street, Headquarters Volunteers;
No. 12 D'Olier Street, Nationality Office;
No. 25 Rutland Square, Gaelic League office;
No. 41 Rutland Square, Foresters' Hall;
Sinn Fein Volunteer premises in city;
All National Volunteer premises in city;
Trades Council premises, Capel Street;
Surrey House, Leinster Road, Rathmines.
The following premises will be isolated, all communication to or
from them prevented: Premises known as the Archbishop's House,
Drumcondra; Mansion House, Dawson Street; No. 40 Herbert Park,
Ballyboden; Saint Enda's College, Hermitage, Rathfarnham; and, in
addition, premises in list 5 D, see maps 3 and 4.
This order should become a classic, because it is such a good list of
all meeting-places of those who loved and worked for Ireland in the last
few years. Even the home of the countess, Surrey House, was to have been
occupied; and Saint Enda's, the school where Padraic Pearse was head
master and chief inspiration, was to be "isolated."
Had there been any question about a rising, the possession of this
secret order to the military authorities in Dublin would have been the
signal for it. It was not to be expected that these headquarters of all
that was Irish in the city would surrender tamely to "occupation." More
than this, the order gave new determination to a secret organization not
mentioned in it, the Irish Republican Brotherhood. Not that this was a
new organization, or unknown to the British, for, in its several phases,
it had been in existence since 1858. Its oath is secret, yet has been
published in connection with disclosures about the Fenian movement. This
was one of the names it bore, before the rising of 1867 betrayed it to
the Government. So at this time Connolly and Padraic Pearse and
McDonagh, with all those working to free Ireland, were members of this
brotherhood, and the republic seemed nearer becoming a reality than
ever before in the history of the long struggle.
At Liberty Hall I saw the flag of the republic waiting to be raised. I
saw, too, the bombs and ammunition stored there, and was set to work
with some other girls making cartridges. This was on the Thursday before
Easter. That same evening I was given a despatch to take to Belfast. The
address of the man to whom it was to be delivered was at Mr. Connolly's
home in the outskirts of the city. I was to go there first and get it
from Nora Connolly, then go on to this man.
I had never been in Belfast, and when I reached the city, it was two
o'clock in the morning. The streets were dark and deserted. I finally
had to ask a policeman which of the few cars running would take me to
that part of town where the Connollys lived. I wonder what he would
have done had he guessed I was bent upon revolutionary business. There
is something very weird in knowing that while things are going on as
usual in the outer world, great changes are coming unawares.
I rang in vain when I reached the house. Could all the family be
somewhere else? Could I have made a mistake? I was beginning to think so
when a window opened, and I heard a voice say: "It's all right, Mother.
It's only a girl." Presently the door opened. They had been afraid that
it was the police, for in these last few days before the time set,
suspense was keen. At any moment all plans might be given away to the
police and every one arrested. A ring in the middle of the night was
terrifying. They had not been to bed; they were making Red Cross
bandages and learning details of equipment and uniform for the
first-aid girls. They had slept little for days, now that the time of
the rising approached.
We did not dare go out again in the dead of night to hunt up the man for
whom I had brought my despatch. This action would create suspicion. So
about five o'clock, just when the working-people were beginning to go
about their tasks, we took the street car, went into another part of
Belfast, and found him.
Mrs. Connolly and the girls went back to Dublin with me. They were to be
there during the revolt, and did not know if they would ever see their
home again; but they dared not take anything with them except the
clothes on their backs. Always no suspicion must be aroused; it must
look as if they were starting off for the Easter holidays. This was not
an easy leave-taking, for there was a fair chance of the house being
sacked and burned. Mrs. Connolly went about, picking up little things
that would go in her trunk but the absence of which would not be noticed
if any inquisitive policeman came in to see whether anything suspicious
was going on. As we left, none of them looked back or gave any show of
feeling. Revolution makes brave actors.
That afternoon I was again at ammunition work. This time my duty was to
go about Dublin, taking from hiding-places dynamite and bombs secreted
therein. Once, on my way back to Liberty Hall with some dynamite wrapped
in a neat bundle on the seat beside me, I heard a queer, buzzing noise.
It seemed to come from inside the bundle.
"Is it going off?" I asked myself, and sat tight, expecting every moment
to be blown to bits. But nothing happened; it was only the car-wheels
complaining as we passed over an uneven bit of track.
V
It was on Saturday morning that I heard the news of our first defeat--a
defeat before we had begun. The ship with arms and ammunition that had
been promised us while I was in Dublin at Christmas, had come into
Tralee Harbor and waited twenty-one hours for the Irish Volunteers of
Tralee to come and unload her. But it had attracted no attention except
from a British patrol-boat, and so had to turn about and put to sea
again. Thereupon, the suspicions of the officials having led them to set
out after the _Aud_, she had shown her German colors and, in full sight
of the harbor, blew herself up rather than allow her valuable cargo to
fall into the hands of the British.
Besides several machine-guns, twenty thousand rifles and a million
rounds of ammunition were aboard that ship. For every one of those
rifles we could have won a man to carry it in the rebellion. Thus their
loss was an actual loss of fighting strength.
It all was a blunder that now seems like fate. The _Aud_, as first
planned, was to arrive on Good Friday. Then the leaders decided it would
be better not to have her arrive until after the rising had begun, or on
Easter. Word of this decision was sent to America, to be forwarded to
Germany. This was done, but the _Aud_ had just sailed, keeping to her
original schedule. She carried no wireless, and so could not be reached
at sea.
I often think the heroic determination of that captain to sink his ship
and crew must have been preceded by many hours of bitterest chagrin and
anxiety. He could not have had the slightest idea why the plan was not
being carried out. It would have been, too, had the Volunteers at
Tralee, remembering the uncertainty of all communication, been on watch
for fear the countermanding order might have miscarried.
But it was too late now to draw back, even had the leaders so desired. I
do not believe that idea ever entered their heads, for their course of
action had been long planned. Two men, however, were uncertain of the
wisdom of going on with it. One of them, The O'Rahilly, was minister of
munitions in the provisional government and felt the loss keenly,
because his entire plan of work had been based on this cargo now at the
bottom of the ocean. When he found that the majority believed success
was still possible, and that the seizure of arms in the British arsenals
in Ireland would compensate for the loss, he gave in and worked as
wholeheartedly as the others. The second man to demur was Professor Eoin
McNeill, who was at the head of the Irish Volunteers as their
commander-in-chief. He did not wish to risk the lives of his men against
such heavy odds. Yet, when he left the conference, he had not given one
hint of actually opposing plans then under discussion.
As I came out of church on Easter morning, I saw placards everywhere to
this effect:
NO VOLUNTEER MANOEUVERS
TO-DAY
This was astounding! The manoeuvers were to be the beginning of the
revolution. To-day they were not to be the usual, simple drill, but the
real beginning of military action. All over Ireland the Volunteers were
expected to mobilize and stay mobilized until the blow had been
struck--until, perhaps, victory had been won. And the Irish Volunteers
made up two thirds of our fighting force. "No Volunteer manoeuvers
to-day"? What could it mean?
I bought a newspaper and read the order of demobilization, signed by
Professor McNeill. What could have happened? I hurried to Liberty Hall
to find the leaders there as much in the dark as I. They knew McNeill
had been depressed and fearful of results, but they had not supposed him
capable of actually calling off his men from the movement so late in the
day, though this was quite within his technical rights if he wished.
They had taken for granted that he, like The O'Rahilly, would prefer to
cast in his lot with the rest of us. I recalled that at Christmas the
countess had been eager to have another head chosen for the Volunteers.
Over and over again she had said that, though McNeill had been splendid
for purposes of organization, and the presence of so earnest and pacific
a man in command of the Volunteers had prevented England from getting
nervous, he was not the man for a crisis. She liked him, but her
intuition proved right. He could not bear that his Irish Volunteers
should risk their lives and gain nothing thereby. He truly believed they
had no chance without the help the _Aud_ had promised. As soon as he had
published his demobilization order, he went to his home outside Dublin
and stayed there during the rising. It was there he was arrested and,
though his action so helped the British that the royal commission
afterward said he "broke the back of the rebellion," he was sentenced
for life, and sits to-day in Dartmoor Prison making sacks. This is the
man who was one of our greatest authorities on early Irish history.
There never was a hint of suspicion that McNeill's act was other than
the result of fear. No one who knew him could doubt his loyalty to
Ireland. It was his love for the Volunteers, the love of a man
instinctively pacifist, that made him give that order. Oh, the satire of
history! By such an order, many of us believe, he delivered to the
executioner the flower of Ireland's heart and brain. We believe that if
those manoeuvers had taken place at the time set, the British arsenals
in Ireland would easily have been taken and arms provided for our men.
Indeed, we would rather have taken arms and ammunition from the British
than have accepted them as gifts from other people.
The eternal buoyancy with which Irishmen are credited came to their
rescue that Sunday morning. Mr. Connolly and others believed that if
word was sent into the country districts that the Citizen Army was
proceeding with its plans, that the Volunteers of Dublin, consisting of
four battalions under Padraic Pearse and Thomas McDonaugh, were going to
mobilize, the response would be immediate. At once word was sent out
broadcast. Norah Connolly walked eighty miles during the week through
the country about Dublin, carrying orders from headquarters. But she,
like other messengers, found that the Volunteers were so accustomed to
McNeill's signature that they were afraid to act without it. They
feared a British trick. We Irish are so schooled in suspicion that it
sometimes counts against us. In Galway they had heard that the rising in
Dublin was on, and later put up such a fight that, had it been seconded
in other counties by even a few groups, the republic would have lived
longer than it did. It might even have won the victory in which, only
three days before, we all had faith.
The Volunteers numbered men from every class and station; the Citizen
Army was made up of working-men who had the advantage of being under a
man of decision and quick judgment. At four o'clock the Citizen Army
mobilized in front of Liberty Hall to carry out the route march as
planned. After this march the men were formed into a hollow square in
front of Liberty Hall and Connolly addressed them.
"You are now under arms," he concluded. "You will not lay down your
arms until you have struck a blow for Ireland!"
The men cheered, shots were fired into the air, and that night their
barracks was Liberty Hall.
You might think a demonstration of this character, a speech in the open,
would attract enough attention from the police to make them send a
report to the authorities. None was sent. They had come to feel, I
suppose, that while there was so much talk there would be little action.
Nor did they remember that Easter is always the anniversary of that
fight hundreds of years ago when native Irish came to drive the
foreigner from Dublin. This year, in addition, it fell upon the date of
the Battle of Clontarf, so there was double reason for sentiment to
seize upon the day for a revolt.
During the night, Irishmen from England and Scotland who had been
encamped at Kimmage with some others, came into Dublin and joined the
men at Liberty Hall. Next morning I saw them while they were drawn up,
waiting for orders. Every man carried a rifle and a pike! Those pikes
were admission of our loss through the sinking of the _Aud_, for the men
who carried them might have been shouldering additional rifles to give
to any recruits picked up during the course of the day. Pikes would not
appeal to an unarmed man as a fit weapon with which to meet British
soldiers in battle. We could have used every one of those twenty
thousand lost rifles, for they would have made a tremendous appeal.
I was sent on my bicycle to scout about the city and report if troops
from any of the barracks were stirring. They were not. Moreover, I
learned that their officers, for the most part, were off to the races at
Fairview in the gayest of moods.
When I returned to report to Mr. Connolly, I had my first glimpse of
Padraic Pearse, provisional president of the Irish Republic. He was a
tall man, over six feet, with broad shoulders slightly stooped from long
hours as a student and writer. But he had a soldierly bearing and was
very cool and determined, I thought, for a man on whom so much
responsibility rested,--at the very moment, too, when his dream was
about to take form. Thomas McDonagh was also there. I had not seen him
before in uniform, and he, too, gave me the impression that our Irish
scholars must be soldiers at bottom, so well did he appear in his green
uniform. At Christmas he had given me a fine revolver. It would be one
of my proudest possessions if I had it now, but it was confiscated by
the British.
[Illustration: JAMES CONNOLLY]
I was next detailed as despatch rider for the St. Stephen's Green
Command. Again I went out to scout, this time for Commandant Michael
Mallin. If I did not find the military moving, I was to remain at the
end of the Green until I should see our men coming in to take
possession. There were no soldiers in sight; only a policeman standing
at the far end of the Green doing nothing. He paid no attention to me; I
was only a girl on a bicycle. But I watched him closely. It was
impossible to believe that neither the police nor the military
authorities were on guard. But this chap stood about idly and was the
last policeman I saw until after the rising was over. They seemed to
vanish from the streets of Dublin. Even to-day no one can tell you where
they went.
It was a great moment for me, as I stood there, when, between the
budding branches of trees, I caught sight of men in dark green uniforms
coming along in twos and threes to take up their position in and about
the Green and at the corners of streets leading into it. There were only
thirty-six altogether, whereas the original plan had been for a hundred.
That was one of the first effects of Eoin McNeill's refusal to join us.
But behind them I could see, in the spring sunlight, those legions of
Irish who made their fight against as heavy or heavier odds and who,
though they died, had left us their dream to make real. Perhaps this
time--
At last all the men were standing ready, awaiting the signal. In every
part of Dublin similar small groups were waiting for the hour to strike.
The revolution had begun!
VI
To the British, I am told, there was something uncanny about the
suddenness with which the important centers of Dublin's life were
quietly seized at noon on Easter Monday by groups of calm, determined
men in green uniforms.
They were not merely surprised; they were frightened. The superstitious
element in their fear was great, too. It had always been so. When
Kitchener was drowned off the Irish coast, a man I know, an Irishman,
spoke of it to an English soldier.
"Yes; you and your damned rosaries!" retorted the soldier, looking
frightened even as he said it.