All of which, I need hardly say, I took—as everyone in my place would have taken it—cum grano salis, but it all came back to me the moment I heard the first shot. Especially did it flash across my mind when, bringing back to Dun's Hospital a dead Sinn Feiner, the famous document fell out of his pocket, which is strikingly similar in thought to my friend's prognostications.
According to Alderman Kelly, speaking on the Thursday before the outbreak in the Dublin Corporation, some such order had been "recently addressed to and was on the files of Dublin Castle," according to which the arrest of all the leaders of the Irish Volunteers, together with the members of the Sinn Fein Council, the Executive Committee of the National (Redmondite) Volunteers, and the Executive Committee of the Gaelic League, had been sanctioned.
Probably, however, the best diagnosis of the situation immediately preceding the outbreak was the letter published by the New Statesman of May 6th, that had been written as early as April 7th, and which, coming from the most eminent victim of the danger so clearly foreseen by him, must have special force at the present moment.
It was from no less than F. Sheehy Skeffington.
"Sir,—The situation in Ireland is extremely grave. Thanks to the silence of the daily Press, the military authorities are pursuing their Prussian plans in Ireland unobserved by the British public; and, when the explosion which they have provoked occurs, they will endeavour to delude the British public as to where the responsibility lies. I write in the hope that, despite war-fever, there may be enough sanity and common sense left to restrain the militarists while there is yet time.
"I will not take up your space by recounting the events that have led up to the present situation—the two years' immunity accorded to Sir Edward Carson's Volunteers in their defiant illegalities, the systematic persecution of the Irish Volunteers from the moment of their formation (nine months before the war), the militarist provocations, raids on printing offices, arbitrary deportations, and savage sentences which have punctuated Mr. Redmond's recruiting appeals for the past eighteen months. As a result of this recent series of events, Irish Nationalist and Labour opinion is now in a state of extreme exasperation. Recruiting for the British Army is dead; recruiting for the Irish Volunteers has, for the moment, almost reached the mark of one thousand per week—which is Lord Wimborne's demand for the British Army. A special stimulus has been given to the Irish Volunteer movement by the arrest and threatened forcible deportation (at the moment of writing it is still uncertain whether the threat will be carried out) of two of its most active organizers.
"There are two distinct danger-points in the position. In the first place, the Irish Volunteers are prepared, if any attempt is made forcibly to disarm them, to resist, and to defend their rifles with their lives. In the second place, the Irish Citizen Army (the Labour Volunteers) are prepared to offer similar resistance, not only to disarmament, but to any attack upon the Press which turns out the Workers' Republic—successor to the suppressed Irish Worker—which is printed in Liberty Hall.
"There is no bluff in either case. That was shown (1) in Tullamore on March 20th, when an attempt at disarming the small local corps of Irish Volunteers was met with revolver shots and a policeman was wounded—fortunately not seriously; (2) in Dublin, on March 24th and following days, when, at the rumour of an intended raid on the Workers' Republic, the Irish Citizen Army stood guard night and day in Liberty Hall—many of them having thrown up their jobs to answer promptly the mobilization order—armed and prepared to sell their lives dearly. The British military authorities in Ireland know perfectly well that the members of both these organizations are earnest, determined men. If, knowing this, General Friend and his subordinate militarists proceed either to disarm the Volunteers or to raid the Labour Press, it can only be because they want bloodshed—because they want to provoke another '98, and to get an excuse for a machine-gun massacre.
"Irish pacifists who have watched the situation closely are convinced that this is precisely what the militarists do want. The younger English officers in Dublin make no secret of their eagerness 'to have a whack at the Sinn Feiners'; they would much rather fight them than the Germans.[3] They are spurred on by the Carson-Northcliffe conscriptionist gang in London. On April 5th the Morning Post vehemently demanded the suppression of the Workers' Republic; on April 6th a question was put down in the House of Commons urging Mr. Birrell to disarm the Irish Volunteers. These gentry know well the precise points where a pogrom can most easily be started.
"Twice already General Friend has been on the point of setting Ireland in a blaze—once last November, when he had a warrant made out for the arrest of Bishop O'Dwyer, of Limerick; once on March 25th, when he had a detachment of soldiers with machine guns in readiness to raid Liberty Hall. In both cases Mr. Birrell intervened in the nick of time, and decisively vetoed the militarist plans. But some day Mr. Birrell may be overborne or may intervene too late. Then, once bloodshed is started in Ireland, who can say where or how it will end?