Our road came in for a spell of peace after the departure of the Minister of Propaganda. From time to time other houses up and down the way had been looked up by the Crown Forces; but for a while the neighbourhood seemed to pass out of the public eye, and the lorries rolled down other streets.

I had been out when the Auxiliaries made their call, and I returned to find a gaping congregation at the mouth of our street, and outside our house the glaring headlights of an armoured car, and two great shadowy lorries, which were filling up again with men. As I reached the door, a neighbour, on tiptoe with excitement, called from her top doorstep, “They’ve raided your house again, and they’ve taken a man out of it.”

I had come as the curtain was falling. The engines of the lorries were humming, and first one lorry moved off and then the next, and the armoured car rolled on their heels. In a few moments the street, which had been filled with noise, became quiet again, heads went in from windows, and people retreated from doorsteps.

But our door remained open, and on the top step, in the hall light, stood a little group of women: Mrs. Slaney, upright and defiant, Mrs. Fitzgerald gazing wistfully into the dark, and my wife.

“What do you think of this?” Mrs. Slaney demanded, turning terribly upon me as I came up the steps. “Any honest Englishman must blush for what his Government does.”

While I was searching for a happy answer, Mrs. Fitzgerald said something which gave me a peep into her mind.

“If it weren’t for the work,” she said, “it’s a good thing in some ways that this has happened. There was always the chance he might be shot in the street. He’s safer where he is. And he wanted a rest.”

“There you are, Mabel,” said a voice, and Miss Gavan Duffy, sister of the Sinn Fein Ambassador to Rome, came up the steps.

“They’ve just taken him,” Mrs. Fitzgerald said.

“I heard,” Miss Gavan Duffy answered, making me wonder at the speed at which news travelled among them.

Mrs. Fitzgerald had become all energy. “I shall have to go down and let the newspapers know,” she said. “They’ll have it in to-morrow morning like that. Once it’s in the papers the Castle people are less likely to do anything to him.”

“I expect he’ll be all right, Mabel,” Miss Gavan Duffy suggested. “There’s not much time for you before Curfew.”

“Are you expecting anything to happen to him?” I asked.

Mrs. Fitzgerald turned in my direction. “It will be all right if I let the papers know he has been taken. The Castle people can’t deny things then. It’s on the way to the Castle and during interrogation that our people sometimes come in for a bad time. Once they are properly lodged they are all right. Desmond will probably be interrogated to-night. There is a captain”—I forget now what name she said—“who was wounded in the war and seems to be a degenerate. He takes a delight in torturing our people. Desmond may come before him to-night. It makes a difference whom our boys go before when they are up for interrogation.”

Before the night was much older, I believe Mrs. Fitzgerald, true to her word, was on her way down town to hand in her news at the newspaper offices.

We saw very little of her at first after that evening. She lived underneath us with a nurse and the infant son, Fergus. There were two other boys at school.

There was no more tireless worker in the Republican cause. She worked all day, and for a while after her husband went she worked all night—keeping his propaganda work up to date, I suppose. Mrs. O’Grady, kneeling on a piece of newspaper before our sitting-room fire of a morning, would sniff and say, “That woman’s light is never out. That woman’s writing there all night. She’ll kill herself if she doesn’t mind. She’s that pale each morning she looks like a ghost. And what now, if the Black-and-Tans come back again and find what she’s got there?”

“Och, Mrs. O’Grady, indade and these do be terrible times,” I would answer.

When Mrs. Fitzgerald was not at work below she was in the streets, hurrying, no doubt on the business of the Republic, from house to house. She never walked, she went always at a trot. She seemed always behind time, always at the end of her tether; always ready for any new work that might have to be done. If all she did in a day were well done, she would have been one of the most useful members of the Cumann na mBan.

Yet, as was the case with numerous other prominent women, the British Government never took steps to put an end to her activities, though it was common knowledge that as the men were taken, the work fell more and more upon the shoulders of women.

For days after her husband’s arrest, Mrs. Fitzgerald kept very much to herself, partly, no doubt, because of her press of work, partly because her work was confidential; but also, I think, because she was sensitive and loth to intrude.

In the beginning it was “Good morning,” if we passed in the hall or in the street; then she came up one day to get the address of some publishers for her husband’s plays, and so the acquaintance made headway. One evening, on some errand or other, I penetrated for the first time into her sitting-room.

She was reading at the table in the small circle of light cast by the lamp, and she looked immensely lonely. It was as though there was just the circle of light where she sat reading, and outside that the dark—the dark room with high lights here and there on the bookcases, the dark city in a greater circle outside, and encircling the city the darkness one felt resting over the land, over the troubled world for that matter. I do not know if she felt as I felt about this, she looked as lonely as any creature I have seen.

I cannot recall whether we had said “good evening”—we had said no more than that—when furiously, wildly on the silence, a volley of shots burst out near Stephen’s Green, abruptly as light flashing out of darkness. The shooting continued for several seconds, seconds which any one unused to shooting would have reckoned as minutes, and then wore out in the customary fashion, odd shots coming from a greater and greater distance, as if a running fight was moving away from us.

Mrs. Fitzgerald threw up her head, not in fear, hardly with a startled movement; but as though hearing the battle afar off, the thunders of the captains and the shouting. I forget what we said at the end of the shooting, remarks were fatuous in the circumstances; but in those moments I had seen more clearly than ever before the stupendous waste of energy caused by man not having learned to work in harmony with man.

If ever there had been an attempt to reach the truth of the Irish story, that effort had long ago been expended. Nobody wanted the truth now, neither Loyalist nor Republican, and it was difficult to remain in Ireland and be a bystander. It was necessary to take up the cudgels for one side or the other, and to lie for the side you chose.

That honest men were to be found holding to either opinion, and that rogues were to be found holding to either opinion was as absolutely a fact as that there had just been firing going on; but neither man, woman, nor child desired such an unpalatable truth. It suited the Republicans to label all members of the Crown Forces as jailbirds and assassins, to state this for propaganda purposes at the tops of their voices, to bludgeon themselves into believing it to be the case.

It suited the Loyalists to call the Irish Volunteers a murder gang, though the long resistance of the Republican army, and the numbers enlisted in the ranks had long confounded this statement. It suited Loyalists to hypnotise themselves into this belief, otherwise they might have stopped short with their mouths open in the middle of a shout, and demanded of one another was there not some justice in the Republican cause.

Faugh! a man grows cynical if he contemplates too long this state of things, and asks himself what is any controversy other than a handful of thinking men leading a mob against a second handful of thinking men leading a mob, and the mob some blundering animal which can be made wild or tame as it is stroked or beaten. Never is it fed with the truth.

Yet fundamentally all men are the same.

Those Black-and-Tans, those Auxiliary Police who had been shopping in Grafton Street at Christmas, went shopping in armoured lorries, and when the lorry stopped at the shop door, and the shoppers went inside, guards with rifles were posted in the street. Such trouble and risks did these people take that their wives, their children, and their friends should be remembered at this time.

And no doubt the Republican Volunteers, such of them as were lying out on the bleak hillsides, such of them as frequently had to retreat into caves, turned in thought at Christmas to such gentle things as mothers, lovers, wives, and children and their toys. A few months after this struggle was done, the “murder gang” and “Hamar Greenwood’s assassins” would be living as friends again.

Waste! Waste!

Looking at this woman who sat here so lonely, who once must have been pretty and still was good-looking, with the light from the lamp falling upon her fair hair, which was neither gold nor brown nor red nor auburn, but a blend of those colours, I felt the pity of the fact that she was using her energies against the British nation instead of with it.

She had chosen the thorny instead of the smooth path of life, for I understand she had been reared in easy circumstances; she had borne three children during her difficulties, she had witnessed raid and arrest, she had had her furniture and clothes destroyed, and she had had to do battle for herself and her children while her husband was in prison. She was tireless in helping on the Republic, which was her creed, and she never complained. She was only one of others like herself.

All day long and all night long the lorries and the armoured cars rolled up and down the streets, and the patrols of armed men tramped round the corners—Loyalist energy to meet this Republican energy. What waste that the two energies should be employed against each other!

Or is it that the gods have longer vision than mortal men, and afflict man with an idea that, like rain upon a plant, difficulty shall water his spirit, and it shall sprout and flourish? Is it that men live and live again, the spirit working in matter and mastering it life by life? If this be so there seems a plan in confusion, use in wasted effort, hope in hopelessness.

The acquaintance with Mrs. Fitzgerald grew, though circumstance set limits upon it. Her work kept her to herself. All sorts of people used to call, and I do not doubt some of them were of interest to the British authorities. Once she must have held a meeting of some importance, because a picket, who seemed to have cross eyes, stood outside the house and glared at me when I came home, and I thought he was there to assassinate me.

But though we never shared the secrets of her work, the acquaintance grew, and she gave us peeps into her life.

She was an out-and-out Republican, and contemplated nothing short of the Republic. I was sure she was doomed to disappointment, and hinted this once. She answered:

“If we do not get a Republic at the end of this, there will always be a Republican party, and I shall belong to it. We will never give up the Republic.” A minute later she said an illuminating thing. “We are not in sympathy with England. We would sooner make an alliance with some country like France.”

Although she held extreme views and had suffered for them, I found her far less bitter in her statements about the enemy than the sympathisers who gave sympathy as a sole contribution to the movement. She spoke of the Crown Forces in a professional manner as part of the obstacles to be got out of the way. She would have shown them no mercy; but she bore them no more rancour than was necessary. She was used to dealing with them, knew all the tricks of the trade, and made use of her advantages.

This same Mrs. Fitzgerald, I came to find out, mother of three children, woman of so many duties that she went at a jog-trot in the streets, this Mrs. Fitzgerald was a most romantic person. Her first hero had been Padraig Pierce, a leader of the 1916 Rising, and she had called one of her boys after him. The man to fill his place was Michael Collins, Mick as she called him, the Republican Minister of Finance, who used to be spoken of as “a certain minister,” the phrase whispered from person to person, as if his name spoken aloud would blast the lips that uttered it.

She spoke quite simply of being battered from pillar to post, of having her household gods damaged, of doing without them, of the frequent difficulty of getting a roof over her head, yet I believe she thought wistfully now and then of the fleshpots she had given up for the Republic. She reminded me of those women who have been drudges for the sake of their children, and who point fiercely at what they have produced when some scented, jewelled creature passes by.

I have spoken of her at length, because she represented a type of Irish woman whose sincerity and generosity could not be denied.

Seldom a day went by without sound of explosion near or far, seldom a night went through without shooting, it might be an intermittent shot or two or a sudden volley breaking out wildly on the quiet, followed by desultory shooting, growing fainter as the exchange of shots passed down distant streets.

It was too early yet for the weather to be charitable, for days to lengthen appreciably or nights to shorten; but one had the fancy that the sun was on the way back from happier lands, and when it returned peace might come with it, that honourable peace without which neither side would stay a hand, that honourable peace which seemed so impossible to conceive and to bring about.

It was a case of wish being father to the thought, for matters were continuing to go from bad to worse. The Republican Volunteers appeared to be adopting a bolder policy, and some of the skirmishes which took place deserved the name. From the private citizen’s point of view, the situation had become a great deal worse. Volunteers had taken to ambushing the military lorries in the streets, and this method of campaign was the last drop in the cup of woe of the peace-loving person.

The arguments the Republicans put forward for this step were sufficiently sound in their way. They declared the enemy used the streets on their work of raid and arrest, and obtained special protection. Where the Republican policy was most open to criticism was in the fact that the Volunteers made flagrant use of the protection afforded by the crowd.

The Volunteers could have operated in deserted places, the outlying streets and so on; but such a course increased personal risks. There was greater likelihood of discovery from loitering, there was more chance of coming under the return fire from police lorries, and the neighbouring getaways would not be good. When a busy street was decided on, it was chosen for its escapes, for the opportunities afforded the ambushers of mingling with the crowd until the chosen moment, and thirdly, because, after the attack, the Volunteers could become the crowd again, and the ambushed troops would not know where to shoot.

In nine cases out of ten it was the inoffensive citizen who paid the penalty of other people’s political views. In the exchange of fire some harassed bystander was generally brought to the ground. Finally, public nerves were so stretched that sudden explosions brought about stampedes, and it is on record that the backfire of a motorcycle caused women near at hand to faint.

The climax was the Grafton Street ambush, when sixteen passers were wounded by bomb splinters. There were no casualties among the police, and the ambushers got away unscathed.

It is possible in the beginning there were more casualties among the Crown Forces than were acknowledged; but casualties on either side were few. On the heels of the weapon of offence follows always the defensive weapon. It was not long before stout wire netting, sloped at such an angle that bombs aimed at the lorries rolled off on to the ground, was stretched over the tops of the lorries. “Chook, chook, chook!” cried the rebel children as the police flew by, and the following mot went the rounds of Dublin, “The Boers put them in khaki, the Germans put the tin hats on them; but it took the Sinn Feiners to put them into cages.”

“Four years, five years,” Mrs. Erskine Childers said to me one day, “our people can carry on like this, and by that time England will have experienced a social upheaval and Ireland will have come into her own.”

In truth, the Irish people would never be overcome by this glorified police hunt. Though the leaders might be netted one by one, others would spring up like wheat in their places. Where one man went down another would rise up. Old women of seventy carried the guns to the Volunteers in the fields. Children as high as one’s hip acted as spies and messengers. The nation was in travail, but the nation was exalted. The military force which the British Government saw fit to use could only bleed, it could not kill.