Before he was hanged he said that his whole object in coming to Ireland was to prevent the Revolution. He did not do so, but was, perhaps, the primary cause of its failure.
Acting on Casement's message and believing it, MacNeill sent out the demobilizing orders. He had sent out many of them before the other leaders became aware of it. He also gave instructions to the Secretary of the Irish Volunteers to send out more. Then Pearse and MacDonagh had a conference with him. After the conference he said to the Secretary that although the thing was hopeless, he was afraid it must go on.
He knew that the revolutionary leaders had decided that the revolution must take place, even though the loss of the arms had seriously crippled their plans. He knew that a disarmament of the Irish Volunteers had been threatened, also the imprisonment of the leaders. He knew that the Volunteers would resist the disarming, and that the leaders still thought that they would have a good fighting chance.
When he knew that the fight would go on in Dublin, in spite of his order, he began to weigh up the consequences, and saw nothing before the Irish Volunteers save death and imprisonment. The responsibility of allowing these men to go out to meet these, weighed too heavily on him, and he thought that he might save the Irish Volunteers in the country from them. He then had a message inserted in the Sunday Independent, a paper that went to all the nooks and corners of the country, to the effect that:
"All Volunteer maneuvers for Sunday are canceled. Volunteers everywhere will obey this order.
(Signed) EOIN MACNEILL.
It was not until Sunday morning that the other leaders knew of this demobilization order in the paper.
The consequences of this order in the paper, and the orders that were sent out before it, I have already told.