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.
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.
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."