"Easy now, Captain," said my father, "remember they are only volunteers." Captain White turned like a flash.
"Yes," he said. "And aren't they great?" And he forgot his rage in his admiration of the men of a few weeks' training. He gave an order, the men marched past and at a given place they received broom handles with which they practiced rifle drill.
After rifle drill came the line up for the march home. We waited till the last row was filing past and then fell in and marched back to the city with the Irish Citizen Army. It was exhilarating. At no period could I see the first part of the Army. The men and boys were whistling tunes to serve them in lieu of bands. On they swung to Beresford Place, where they lined up in front of Liberty Hall. Jim Larkin and my father spoke to them from the windows. When one man called out, "We'll stick by you to the end," he was loudly and heartily cheered. Captain White gave the order of dismissal and the men broke ranks but did not go away. When they were not drilling, or sleeping, or eating, they thronged round Liberty Hall, attesting that "where the heart lieth there turneth the feet."
When the strike was over and the men had won the right to organize, the membership of the Irish Citizen Army dwindled rapidly. When one takes into consideration the arduous work and the long hours that comprised the daily round of these men, the wonder was that there were so many of them willing to meet after working hours to be drilled into perfect soldiers. But they knew that by so doing they were, in the words of my father, "signifying their adhesion to the principle that the freedom of a people must in the last analysis rest in the hands of that people—that there is no outside force capable of enforcing slavery upon a people really resolved to be free, and valuing freedom more than life." Also that "The Irish Citizen Army in its constitution pledges its members to fight for a Republican Freedom in Ireland. Its members are, therefore, of the number who believe that at the call of duty they may have to lay down their lives for Ireland, and have so trained themselves that at the worst the laying down of their lives shall constitute the starting point of another glorious tradition—a tradition that will keep alive the soul of the nation." And this was the knowledge that lightened all the labor of drilling and soldiering.
I was present at a lecture given to them by their Commandant, James Connolly. It was on the art of street fighting. I remember the close attention every man paid to the lecture and the interest they displayed in the diagrams drawn on the board the better to explain his meaning. At the close of the lecture he asked, "Are there any questions?" There were many questions, all of them to the effect, whether it would not be better to do it this way, or could we not get better results that way. All in deadly earnestness, thinking only on how the best results might be achieved and not one man commenting on the danger to life the acts would surely entail. That one would have to risk death was taken for granted. Their one thought was how to get the most work done before death came.
A few months later there were maneuvers between one company of the Irish Citizen Army and a company of the Irish Volunteers. The Irish Volunteers had been formed after the Irish Citizen Army and by this time had spread over the length and breadth of Ireland. While the Irish Citizen Army admitted none but union men the Irish Volunteers made no such distinction. And as they both had the one ideal of a Republican Ireland there was much friendly rivalry between the two bodies. This time the maneuvers took the form of a sham battle, which took place at Ticknock about six miles outside of Dublin. The Irish Citizen Army won the day. I particularly remember that afternoon. My father came into the house, tired but pleasantly excited—he had been an onlooker at the sham battle. "I've discovered a great military man," he said in high glee. "The way he handled his men positively amounted to genius. Do you know him—his name is Mallin?"
I did not know him then. I met him later when he was my father's Chief of Staff. During the rising he was Commandant in charge of the St. Stephen's Green Division of the Army of the Irish Republic, and he was executed during that dreadful time following the surrender of the Irish Republican Army.