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 MANŒUVERS
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.

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!

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