To the British, I am told, there was something uncanny about the suddenness with which the important centers of Dublin's life were quietly seized at noon on Easter Monday by groups of calm, determined men in green uniforms.
They were not merely surprised; they were frightened. The superstitious element in their fear was great, too. It had always been so. When Kitchener was drowned off the Irish coast, a man I know, an Irishman, spoke of it to an English soldier.
"Yes; you and your damned rosaries!" retorted the soldier, looking frightened even as he said it.
The British seem to feel we are in league with unearthly powers against which they have no protection. On Easter Monday they believed that behind this sudden decision, as it appeared to them, something dark and sinister was lurking. How else would we dare to revolt against the British Empire? It was as if our men were not flesh and blood, but spirits summoned up by their own bad conscience to take vengeance for many centuries of misrule. It must have been some such feeling that accounted for the way they lost, at the very outset, all their usual military calm and ruthlessness.
We recognized this feeling, and it made our men stronger in spirit. We were convinced of the justice of our cause, convinced that even dying was a small matter compared with the privilege we now shared of fighting for that cause. Besides, there was no traitor in our ranks. No one had whispered a word of our plans to the British authorities. That is one reason why our memory of Easter Week has in it something finer than the memory of any other rising in the past. You must bear in mind that the temptation to betray the rising must have been just as strong, that it had in it just as much guarantee of security for the future, as heretofore. Yet no one yielded to this temptation. Even more amazing was the fact that the authorities had not paid any heed to those utterances which for months past had been highly seditious. For instance, here is what Padraic Pearse stated openly in one of his articles:
I am ready. For years I have waited and prayed for this day. We have the most glorious opportunity that has ever presented itself of really asserting ourselves. Such an opportunity will never come again. We have Ireland's liberty in our hands. Or are we content to remain as slaves and idly watch the final extermination of the Gael?
Nothing could be more outspoken or direct. When it is remembered that England's enemies have always been regarded as Ireland's allies; that an English war, wherever fought, is a signal for us to rise once more, no matter how many defeats we have suffered, it might have been supposed the British, stationed in such numbers in and around Dublin, would not have been put to sleep by what must have seemed, to the wary observer, an acute attack of openness and a vigorous interest in military affairs. There were some, of course, among the police and officials who made their reports of "highly seditious" meetings and writings, but I suppose the authorities did not believe we would strike. From America they learned of aid to come by ship when Igel's papers were seized by United States authorities. It may have been this information that put the English patrol-boats on their guard in Tralee Harbor. It even may have been thought that when that ship went down the rising was automatically ended. So it might have been had our revolt been "made in Germany," but it must be remembered that it was the Irish who approached the Germans. Thus there was no anxiety in Dublin that Easter Monday except as to which horse would win the Fairview races.
As soon as our men were in position in St. Stephen's Green, I rode off down Leeson Street toward the Grand Canal to learn if the British soldiers were now leaving Beggar's Bush or the Portobello barracks. Everything remained quiet. That signified to me that our men had taken possession of the post-office for headquarters and of all other premises decided on in the revised plan of strategy adapted to a much smaller army.
The names of these places do not sound martial. Jacob's Biscuit Factory, Boland's Bakery, Harcourt Street Railway Station, and Four Courts are common enough, but each had been chosen for the strategic advantage it would give those defending Dublin with a few men against a great number. The Dublin & Southeastern Railway yards, for example, gave control of the approach from Kingstown where, it was expected, the English coming over to Ireland would land.