Late on that fateful Saturday evening upon which the Post Office fell, the Royal Irish Constabulary were posting in all parts of the country the following note signed by Commander P. H. Pearse.

"In order to prevent further slaughter," it ran, "of unarmed people, and in the hope of saving the lives of our followers, now surrounded and hopelessly outnumbered, members of the Provisional Government present at headquarters have agreed to unconditional surrender, and the commanders of all units of the Republican forces will order their followers to lay down their arms."

Yet so confident were the rebels of success in some of the besieged fortresses that they positively refused to believe that their commanders had given in: moreover, the difficulty of obtaining access to some of the insurgents also tended to prolong the conflict, especially in the more outlying districts, and so the struggle went on.

In some cases the rebels, expecting no mercy, preferred to die fighting, and it was only by the interference of the clergy that further destruction and desolation was avoided.

Jacobs's factory, for example—second only to Guinness's Brewery in size, and occupied at first by some 1,500 rebels, who had taken possession while the workers were on holiday—put up a strenuous fight, and though it was by now surrounded by the military, the men, firmly protected and encouraged by the feeling that headquarters depended upon them, refused all offers to surrender.

Several priests had previously made the attempt to influence them, but had been quietly and courteously refused, and only succeeded eventually about 4 p.m. on Sunday, when the Volunteers finally evacuated the premises.

The majority of the exits had by Sunday become occupied by the military, who had gradually turned the place into a death-trap, and from this the rebels were saved by a somewhat picturesque climax.

A well-known Carmelite monk from Whitefriars Street suddenly made his way through the crowd of spectators and signalled to the insurgents, whereupon one of the sandbagged windows was dismantled and, amid a universal cheer from the crowd, the venerable peacemaker was hoisted up into the fortress.

A short while later his efforts were seen to have succeeded, for the garrison surrendered.

At the Four Courts a priest was likewise instrumental in bringing about the surrender.

The place had been strongly barricaded and provisioned, and would, no doubt, have suffered the same fate as the Post Office had the struggle continued, but for this intervention and the desire on the part of the authorities no doubt to save the Record Office at all costs. Such a loss would, of course, have been far more serious than that of the G.P.O., for in some cases all kinds of documents had been used for the purposes of defence, at one particular spot a whole barricade having been constructed of wills alone.

Father Columbus, O.S.F.C., who was at the time attending to the wounded and dying, saw a girl waving a large white sheet from the building, and we immediately proceeded to inform the military authorities, who were still pounding away at the building with maxims, of the intention of the insurgents to surrender.

An officer was dispatched, and to him Commander Daly, of the Republican Army, rendered unconditional surrender on behalf of the besieged.

Another dramatic surrender on Sunday was that of the College of Surgeons, where the rebels had been making a stout resistance, under the personal command of the celebrated Countess Markievicz.

The green flag which had floated there throughout the week in spite of shot and shell was suddenly lowered, and one of the rebels was seen to climb on the parapet and tie a white scarf, quaintly enough, on to the arm of the central statue, which stood out against the skyline, instead of the flagstaff.

A few seconds later this formal announcement of surrender was followed by the order to "cease fire," and a detachment of soldiers was sent to that side of Stephen's Green.

As they approached, the Countess, who was dressed in a complete outfit of the green uniform of the Irish Volunteers, including green boots and green cock's feathers, something like those on the Italian bersaglieri, emerged from the central doorway. She was closely followed by an attendant carrying a white flag and some sixty to eighty of the defenders.

Solemnly they advanced towards the English officer, and then the Countess, taking off her bandolier and sword, was seen to kiss them reverently and hand them over in the most touching manner—not a little to the perplexity of the young officer.

Dr. Myles Keogh, who, in company with others, acted so bravely in rescuing the wounded, tells of the actual incident of the surrender of De Valera, near Ringsend. Dr. Keogh was on Sunday returning at one o'clock from Glasnevin Cemetery on a hearse, which, under the Red Cross, had left a number of dead for burial, and when opposite Sir Patrick Dun's Hospital a voice hailed him. Two men had come out of the Poor Law Dispensary opposite, in which the Sinn Feiners were installed. So covered with dust were they that he thought both were in khaki. One was a military cadet who had been captured by the Sinn Feiners, the other was the Sinn Fein leader De Valera. "Hullo!" cried De Valera. "Who are you?" replied Dr. Keogh. The response was, "I am De Valera," from one, and from the other it was: "I am a prisoner for the past five days. They want to surrender." Dr. Keogh replied that Sir Arthur Ball, who was in the hospital, would make arrangements. Then the military came up, and after some preliminaries the Sinn Feiners were marched out of the dispensary and conveyed to Lower Mount Street. The hopelessness of the Sinn Feiners was exemplified in some remarks dropped by De Valera. "Shoot me," he said, "if you will, but arrange for my men." Then he added, walking up and down: "If only the people had come out with knives and forks."

I saw Dr. Keogh immediately after this, and he told me that De Valera had complained bitterly that the "English" had continuously violated the white flag and Red Cross, but we could testify to the falsity of this by our own experience, the whole staff having time after time complained that shots appeared to go right across the hospital—and, in point of fact, the right wing of "Elpis" Hospital is simply peppered with bullets—in fact, the wounded Tommies "sunning" themselves on the hospital roof of Dun's had been deliberately fired at till they went down, though I must admit that in this case the Sinn Feiners could hardly have been able to make the distinction required of them. A short while later I saw the professor himself—a tall man, hatless and in the green uniform of the Volunteers—pass along Mount Street with a lad with a white flag, going to point out the positions of the snipers from the factory.

For a moment the soldiers thought he was about to "betray" his pals to save his own life, and, I was glad to notice, instinctively looked with contempt upon him; but the truth of the general order having gone out to surrender soon became known, and as the line of captives marched by the soldiers for the first time got a real look at these men who had, so to speak, staggered the Empire.

Weak, poor, ragged—some cripples; one, his whole face a mass of bandages—I never saw a more reckless or determined body of men in my life, and they contrasted strangely with the placid demeanour of their conquerors. Each marched with a certain lightness of tread—greybeards who no doubt remembered the days of the Famine and boys born since the Boer War; and as they stood there, their hands aloft, between the lines of khaki, not one face flinched. Here and there, however, one could see the older men shaking hands with the younger, muttering, "It isn't the first time we've suffered. But it's all for dear old Ireland," or wishing each other good-bye. That was pathetic to a degree that, I know for a fact, moved some of the English officers themselves.

Suddenly a car came dashing up at full speed. Some turned their heads instinctively, and as they did so noticed that in addition to four khaki uniforms there were two green figures with eyes bandaged.

In an instant the captives had recognized their leaders, themselves also going—God only knew to what punishment, and at once such a cheer went up that the whole street echoed again.

It only needed "God save Ireland" to have completed the drama, but they knew they would be stopped if they began, and, instead, one of them cried out "Are we downhearted?" and immediately every voice, clear and resonant, answered in one ringing "No!"

"If it had not been for the women and children, we should be fighting you still," was the reply of one Sinn Feiner to a soldier; and when asked why they were fighting, another man answered, "We have our orders as well as you—we're both soldiers and fight when our country demands"; while yet a third ventured defiantly, "You've won this time, but next time when you're fighting, our children will win."

Dramatic was no word for the situation, and as I gazed at them there—now no more than a dread convict roll—I pictured the wretched tenements from which most must have come—the worst slums in Europe, by common consent of all Commissions—and asked myself the question what chance or reason they had ever had in life to love either their country or the Empire; and then the picture of the long years of penal servitude, such as John Mitchel had endured for Ireland, arose before my mind, but I consoled myself with the thought, "At least England will understand what caused these men to turn despairingly to revolution," and the words of Mr. Asquith consoled me as I thought of the terrible wholesale vengeance a Prussian officer would take—for had he not said that England had sent the General in whose discretion she had more complete confidence than any other?—but I stopped thinking: it was all too sad: after all, England was surely not going to treat them like the Huns would.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Everybody expected that there would be some sort of ructions between the Volunteers and the military on last St. Patrick's Day, when it was announced that the Sinn Feiners would parade fully armed and with a real maxim gun, but luckily nothing happened.

The next crisis was seen to approach in Holy Week, when large numbers of strangers were noticed to be arriving daily from every part of the country and putting up at lodging-houses.

The strangers were next noticed to be paying continual visits to the Sinn Fein headquarters in Shears Street, extensive premises that were once a hospital.

On the outbreak in Dublin the whole place was put into a state of expectant siege, with passwords and guards, much in the same way as at the G.P.O. in the capital, but no outbreak occurred.

On the Wednesday the Lord Mayor and the Bishop of Cork were able to obtain an interview with the leaders, and as a result of the conference a temporary sort of truce was arranged, which was never really broken, though at times it was a matter of touch and go.

That it would have been serious cannot be doubted, for they claimed no less than six hundred men at headquarters, and anything up from a thousand within the boundaries of the city, to say nothing of the surrounding districts, which were anything but favourable either to John Redmond or William O'Brien.

Now, the inner history of the negotiation, which was later made public in a letter from the Assistant-Bishop of Cork to the Freeman's Journal, is of supreme importance for two reasons.

In the first place, it explains the kind of influences which were at work all over the country to prevent the spread of the outbreak by the better-disposed and more sober-minded of the population.

In the second place, by revealing the psychology of some of the provincial leaders it goes not a little to establish my theory that even as late as Monday night something might have been done had the leaders of the "Republic"—which it must never be forgotten had always been a "provisional" term—been approached by the best spirits in Ireland herself, instead of immediately launching an army corps of troops and a naval detachment bald-headed on to the guns of the Volunteers, who could never have expected to bring off a victory in the real sense of the term, and who were only anxious to offer themselves as a willing holocaust to the Spirit of Nationality they thought was dying fast because it had merged itself into the Spirit of Empire.

As to Kerry, it was looked upon as being "rotten" with Sinn Fein, and had there been a rising, these men would undoubtedly have marched to the help of their Cork brethren.

The theory of the Kerry correspondent of the Times is that the South was awaiting the advent of Sir Roger Casement, who was to have invaded Ireland with a fleet of battle cruisers and an army of 40,000 men, but this ended in as complete a fiasco as the landing of Napper Tandy at Rutland or Wolf Tone in Lough Swilly in 1798.

The rising, however, was not strictly speaking dependent on Sir Roger Casement at all: indeed, as afterwards appeared, he had himself tried to stop the rising by saying that German help had failed.

It appears, moreover, that in Dublin the heads of the Irish Volunteers had long since come under the strong personal influence of the heads of the Citizen Army, and it was these latter who forced the pace; and in admitting this, one is forced to conclude that the rising was as much socialistic and economic as national. This, too, would explain why it was almost entirely confined to Dublin. For only in about three or four other places in Ireland were there risings of any note, and even these were comparatively unimportant: though, of course, there is no knowing to what proportions they might not have swelled had the risings in Kerry and Cork been carried out.

The Volunteers of Swords, for example, who only began activities about seven o'clock on the Wednesday morning, commenced by a capture of the barracks and post office, both of which were in their possession by about 8.30.

Their coup was a minor replica of the Dublin affray. Two of their leaders, a doctor and a school-teacher, rode up in a motor-car as if paying a harmless call, and then suddenly produced revolvers and covered the sergeant, who was standing at the door, saying at the same time: "We want no trouble, but the arms and ammunition you have in the barracks."

At the same moment about fifty other Volunteers closed in from behind, with the result that the three unfortunate policemen could do nothing but surrender, and the booty was distributed amongst the unarmed Volunteers, and whatever was over stored for any recruits the valour of this exploit might bring to the new colours.

The door of the post office was next charged at by three of the strongest of the Volunteers, but being ajar, was consequently entered in the most undignified way by the invaders, who fell head-over-heels into the place, which was a couple of feet below the street-level—luckily for themselves, their rifles not going off.

The telegraphic wires and apparatus were then broken up, and then, proceeding in the direction of Donabate, the railway bridge at Rodgerstown was blown up, cutting off Dublin.

Meanwhile, information had reached Malahide, and there the constabulary at once proceeded to entrench themselves along the railway, in order to protect the important bridge there; but the insurgents did not venture, having already found the contingent that was engaged in a deadly encounter with the Meath police at Ashbourne, towards the end of the week, encamping between Fieldstown and Kilsallaghan.

Here, early on Sunday morning, they were surprised to receive a copy of the proclamation issued by P. H. Pearse, advising them to surrender unconditionally. So surprised in fact were they, that they determined to keep "the ambassador of peace" as a hostage until they verified the astounding news for themselves, one of their leaders motoring up to Dublin with the Chief Constable. On their return, of course, with the news confirmed, there was nothing to do but surrender, and this they accordingly did—their only stipulation being that they should be spared the humiliation of going back through Swords, where most of them lived.

The rising at Enniscorthy at one time threatened to be a more serious affair, though it only began on the Thursday, when the AthenÆum, one of the principal buildings of the town, was seized and turned into a headquarters by the insurgent staff.

Several hundreds of Sinn Feiners now assembled outside, and several dozen motor-cars which had been "commandeered," together with stores of petrol and food, and the men were all served out with ammunition, while amidst huge enthusiasm the green, white, and orange Republican flag was hoisted over the building.

Afterwards railway lines and telegraphs were destroyed by a special force and the town methodically taken over, all business houses and licensed premises being closed, with the exception of the gasworks and the bakeries, where the employees were compelled to perform their public duties in the name of the Commonwealth.

The R.I.C. barracks alone held out, being well supplied with ammunition, but the police there were powerless to interfere, having to stand a sort of siege day after day.

Enniscorthy Castle, which commands the town, was taken from Mr. Henry Roche, J.P. All food and arms and vehicles throughout the town were commandeered. But there was no looting, a considerable body of young men having been formed into a species of Republican police—an organization which would have saved the Dublin rising half its horrors.

The ladies of the "Cumann na Ban" next turned the top story of the AthenÆum into an improvised hospital, and here were brought the wounded in the attack on the constabulary barracks, which lasted all Thursday and part of Friday.

Friday was spent in preparation and expectation—the news of the collapse of the revolt in Dublin not having yet reached them—and on Saturday a motor expedition to Ferns resulted in the capture of the post office and barracks.

As food had now become scarce, shops were only allowed to sell limited quantities, and as the situation was becoming dangerous, with the expected advent of the military, pickets were placed at street corners, and these insisted on the civilian population keeping within doors.

Another strange, though by no means uncommon, sight was whole rows of Volunteers going up to the Cathedral for confession, and on the Sunday attending Mass.

The clergy, while not refusing them the consolations of religion, however, in no way encouraged them in their illusion of success, for on the Sunday morning a party of citizens from Arklow brought a priest under cover of the white flag to announce to the rebels the collapse of the rising in Dublin.

A deputation of the town was then sent to Wexford to interview the military there, who confirmed the news; but, as elsewhere, even this did not satisfy them, and they refused to surrender the town of Enniscorthy until their leaders had seen Dublin's disaster with their own eyes.

Even then the "commanders" wanted to hold out, and, as the Daily Sketch correspondent pointed out, it was only when the chief citizens themselves made the petition that the Volunteers at last consented.

Indeed, it would have been hard to conceive how they could logically have insisted on defending the town, which refused to acknowledge them; and the rebels, in justice be it said of them, were nothing if not logical—even if only the logic of madmen. If Ireland refused to look upon them as saviours, then they were not going to play the part of tyrants; and it seems to me that if the civil authorities of Dublin had taken up this stand on the Tuesday morning, the whole thing might have fizzled off without a single further military casualty.

On Monday therefore—to continue the story of the Enniscorthy rising—the rebels surrendered unconditionally to Colonel French, who entered the town at the head of two thousand military.

At Wexford the situation was saved, as at Drogheda, by the assistance of the National Volunteers, who, under Colonel Jameson Davis, turned out to assist the police, the Lord Mayor and six hundred of the chief citizens enrolling themselves also as special constables.

In Galway rebellion has always been in the blood. It was from Athenry, eleven miles east of Galway, that the "Invincibles," who were responsible for the Phoenix Park murders, came; and an interesting account was given of the rising which now took place at Athenry by one of the special correspondents of the Press, Mr. Hugh Martin.

According to this account the central figure was a "Captain" Mellows, who, deported a month before from Ireland, had managed to make his escape from England, and avoiding detection by the constabulary under the disguise of a priest, suddenly turned up at the psychological moment a few days before the outbreak of the rising in Dublin.

The Town Hall of Athenry, on Sunday and Monday, seemed to have aroused a certain amount of suspicion—it was suspected of being a centre of illegal munition making—but it was not till the Tuesday, thirty-six hours after the seizure of the Dublin Post Office, that it suddenly revealed itself in its true colours, when "Captain" Mellows unexpectedly appeared in the green uniform of an Irish Volunteer and proclaimed the establishment of an Irish Republic to a body of some five hundred Volunteers, two-thirds of whom were armed with rifles and the rest with shot-guns and pikes.

Overcoming the local police, they proceeded to take one of the Irish Board of Agriculture's model farms about three-quarters of a mile from Athenry, and having captured the place and appropriated all money, settled for the night.

The next day, after a vain attempt by the police to dislodge them, they marched, several hundreds strong, with a whole train of wagons and carts filled with food of every description, towards Loughrea, where they captured Lady Ardilaun's seat, Moyode Castle, from the lonely caretaker, John Shackleton, and his pretty eighteen-year-old daughter Maisie.

A curious figure now appeared in the person of Father Feeny, who, according to Hugh Martin, appears to have exercised as much control over the men as the "Captain" himself.

His influence seems to have been on the whole for good, for the account describes him as hearing the men's confessions and insisting that the fifteen to twenty young colleens who were one of the most curious features of the local rising, marching beside the men and doing all their cooking, should be separately accommodated in the castle at night.

Some isolated R.I.C. men who happened to fall into their hands were treated as prisoners, but when on the Thursday afternoon the police from Athenry made an attack, they were chased with motor-cars for a distance of about four miles back to Athenry, where the forces of the Crown only just managed to get into their barracks in the nick of time.

The next day—Friday—saw the positions reversed, and news reached the rebels that troops and artillery were on their way from Loughrea, some six miles' distance, and it was the rebels' turn to turn tail, scattering as they went to right and left, in spite of every effort of "Captain" Mellows to encourage them with stories of the coming invasion by Germany.

Some made for the hills, others tried to get back to their homes, but most were seized by the Belfast police, in cars driven by Ulster Volunteers, and those who did get back had to face not only the taunt of ignominious defeat but the anger of the Redmondites, who now foresaw the possibilities of a retribution quite out of all proportion to the chances they had ever had of success.

Indeed, that seems to have been the general result of the collapse of the rebellion all over Ireland; and though at first it apparently tended to weaken the hands of the Irish Constitutional leader—who, when the news came to him, must have felt as he had on that famous occasion when, as a young man, five minutes before having to make a great speech near Manchester, he was handed the news of the Phoenix Park murders—on the whole it really considerably strengthened his position, much in the same way as the revolt of De Wet brought out the loyalty of General Botha.

Botha, indeed, was one of the very first to see the similarity of the two cases, and wired at once to Redmond, though it can of course only be taken as a very superficial verdict of the South African Premier on the real grievances underlying the movement, since he could hardly be expected to understand Sinn Fein, much less those subtle provocations which eventually counselled the mad appeal to Germany; for there can be little doubt but that, if Castle rule had prevailed in Pretoria as it still does in Dublin, South Africa would long since have been a consenting party to German occupation.

This, however, was only one of the subtler aspects of the rising which hardly found its way across the Channel, and consequently could scarcely be expected to appeal to a colonial who was not an Irishman himself.

As the collapse became more general, however, it became more and more evident to intelligent statesmen that it was more a hatred of Castle rule than a love of German rule that had been at the bottom of it all, and that it had been, in spite of the bluster of foreign alliance, more an armed protest against a domestic state of affairs than a real attempt to sever the Imperial link; nevertheless, the latter idea still survived in the minds of the military authorities, who could see in it nothing else, with the disastrous results that only became evident in the aftermath.