Chapter THE SECOND: Just Before the Battle

Those who went through that period of anxious expectancy between Monday afternoon and Wednesday morning, knowing themselves absolutely at the mercy of what appeared to be a "secret society suddenly gone mad and in possession of the reins of government," will never forget the experience.

The whole thing was so sudden, so unprecedented, so inexplicable that the intelligence simply refused to perform the ordinary functions of thought.

Everywhere civilians were being bullied into obedience at the point of the bayonet: young boys in their teens brandished revolvers in the high roads: rough, brawny dockers walked about endowed apparently with unlimited authority, and in the dark recesses of the General Post Office, beyond the reach of law or argument, the mysterious Republican Brotherhood--omnipotent.

All the while stories were coming in of hairbreadth escapes, of stray shots, apparently from the sky, picking off unfortunate wayfarers, and of whole parties of officers on their way back from the races in their cars being captured and held up by the Volunteers--and every story went one further than the one before it, till one was ready to believe almost anything.

Personally, I kept within the "Metropole," expecting every minute that the "climax" of the situation would be reached, but still the soldiery did not arrive, and we began to come to the belief that in all probability the authorities were only waiting until dusk.

I could not tear myself from the windows. That instinct of expectation gripped me like a vice, and continued to do so for twenty-four solid hours--and if I quote my own experience it is only as an example of what others all around me went through.

It was now about four o'clock, and still I looked out into the street below--the people were beginning to go wild with excitement, for every now and then the Sinn Feiners would fire blank cartridges, and each time they did so, with the one cry "The soldiers are coming!" a mass of several thousand men, women, and children would rush now to one end of Sackville Street, now to the other. After Noblet's it was the Saxon Shoe Company and Dunn's hat-shop's turn to be looted, and one could see little guttersnipe wearing high silk hats and new bowlers and straws, who had never worn headgear before: bare-footed little devils with legs buried in Wellington top-boots, unable to bend their knees, and drunken women brandishing satin shoes and Russian boots till it seemed as if the whole revolution would collapse in ridicule or pandemonium. For there was no animosity in the crowd at first, just as there was no enthusiasm--certainly no avarice or desire for theft--only sheer demoralization and mischief for mischief's sake: but every hour it became worse. Sometimes there was absolutely no point in the loot. I saw an urchin of nine brandishing with pride More's "Utopia" and Wells's "New Machiavelli," which he compared with a rival urchin's--a girl's--bunch of newspapers on "Poultry" and "Wireless," and solemnly exchanging their treasures.

I saw a tussle between two drunken harlots for the possession of a headless dummy taken from a draper's shop, and noted a youngster go up to the very steps of the Provisional Government House of the New Republic of Ireland and amuse the armed rebels with impersonations of Charlie Chaplin.

In another portion of the street I saw a drunken sailor mad with hate make a furious assault upon a woman, and then, when the crowd yelled in horror, suddenly change his mind from murder and kiss his victim: while in yet another portion of the street a woman of about sixty was kneeling with hands outstretched to heaven, clasping a rosary and crying her prayers to the Mother of God in heaven for "Ireland to be a nation once again!"

Time after time I felt inclined to weep with very shame at the whole thing; for as I passed a group of young English _revue_ girls who had come along to see the "show," I heard one exclaim, "A little bit of heaven, and they call it Ireland!" and everyone laughed; and another threw out the gibe: "Irish, and proud of it, eh?"

They were not meant as insults--no, certainly not--merely the happy laughing cynicism of the common-sense view that would be taken of us by hundreds of cartoonists; but I must say they went through me as hardly anything else I witnessed, for they showed in such a terrible light the contrast between the dream that had inspired these men and the reality that they had brought forth.

Meantime, however, things were maturing, and as they matured the ridiculous element faded and the tragic element began to come into the picture.

Every few minutes dispatch riders would come up on motor-cycles to the Post Office, and emerge a few minutes later with sealed orders. A long line of motor-cars "held up" at the point of the revolver was also requisitioned and placed at the disposal of the rebels in a queue before the Post Office side-entrance. Then came the supplies of food and ammunition on huge lorries from the country districts, each with its escort of six young farmers fully armed, with double bandoliers filled to bursting-point with cartridges; and as I stood outside the _Freeman_ offices, just at the side-gate of the "fortress," I was amazed at the regularity of the whole proceeding: password, cheques, guards, orders, everything, in fact, went off without the slightest hitch. And no wonder--as I found out later--for during the past few weeks nearly every manoeuvre had been rehearsed in mufti by the Volunteers, acting under the orders of their chiefs, and each man knew his position, his work, and the exact minute at which he was to perform it.

In this way, at a given signal it had been possible to hold up the whole city of Dublin with the ease of a highwayman holding up a coach on a lonely common in Georgian days.

I shall never forget the awful growing stillness of that afternoon as the hours flew by, for all traffic was at an end. Now and again in the general silence one heard the crack of a rifle, the hoot of a captured motor and the cry "Stop, in the name of the Irish Republic!" from the Volunteers, and the ghastly howling of the mob as more shop-fronts gave way--but all these sounds came spasmodically and only intensified the surrounding stillness. And all the while everyone was expecting the arrival of the military, and saying, "When will the soldiers come?" Then, "Will the soldiers come?" and later, "Will the soldiers never come?"

Soon dusk began to come on more rapidly, and we conjectured that the authorities must have determined to wait till dark. The Volunteers, too, felt this, and took up positions on the roof and strengthened their outposts, every hour or so a dozen or two Volunteers fully armed going off from the Post Office.

The "Metropole" being situated alongside the Post Office, I could not get any direct view of what I knew would be the centre of the battle, and so I determined to move across to the "Imperial," which, situated _vis-à-vis_ the Post Office on the top of Clery's Stores, commanded the fullest view of the rebel headquarters.

There I found everyone, including the manager, Mr. Woods, in the same state of bewilderment as at the "Metropole."

I mentioned who I was, and was told that a priest in the smoking-room had just heard that John Redmond had been captured by the Sinn Feiners and had, in all probability, been shot--but this was only one of the thousand rumours that were by this time flying about the city, another being that the Castle was in flames, with the Lord-Lieutenant in the middle of the inner yard, and yet another describing the heroic death of Father O'Doherty of Marlborough Street, who was supposed to have been shot through the head in full vestments, having endeavoured to remonstrate, cross in hand, with the rebels, in order to persuade them to lay down their arms in the name of God.

The street was now (9.30) in a perfect state of pandemonium, for a fire had begun in the premises of the Cable Shoe Company, which immediately adjoined Clery's, and hence was an imminent danger to us.

I rushed down, and to my amazement found that the place, already looted, had been set on fire deliberately, and that there was not one of the crowd of two hundred spectators who seemed to be aware of, or even to care about, the fate of the flat over the shop, which from the look of the curtains appeared to be inhabited.

The cellars were crackling as if they contained some fatty, resinous substance, purposely placed there with incendiary intent, and the smoke was blinding and suffocating. The door of the side entrance was locked and I could not force it, so I called for a few volunteers to try to break it down by ramming it with some planks that were lying about, and though we did not succeed in breaking it, we were able to arouse the attention of the sleepers, and a dentist popped his head out and told us there were women and children in the house.

Some by this time had run off for the fire-engine, and others, realizing the danger, helped us to carry the inmates to safety, one woman being actually in her confinement and frightened almost to death. After that we rescued a few personal belongings with difficulty, but the smoke was too terrible to do more, and the stairs were perfectly hot; and so I went back with the owner to the hotel, where the family were put up and given clothes, having been forced to rise from their beds.

Soon after this I met Mr. Marsh, the manager of the Coliseum, who told me that the rebels had just commandeered the building, which immediately backs the Post Office, and had placed a guard at the door to prevent looting.

As a matter of fact, as we afterwards found out, it was merely to secure the building as a means of retreat in case of a rout of their headquarters at the Post Office--with the result that the building is now burnt to the ground by naval shells, which pursued the rebels in their retreat.

Sleep on such a night was of course out of the question--we did not know at what time the military would arrive--but in any case we secured a room on the second floor, looking into the street, for we were determined to see the thing out, still never dreaming but that the whole thing would be over within a few dramatic hours. Meanwhile the street below became worse and worse. On all sides now the looters came up from the black depths of the slums like packs of hungry wolves, so that every minute we expected that Clery's underneath would be the next to go. Indeed, over at Mansfield's opposite we heard one of the crowd telling the looters to go over and smash William Martin Murphy's windows--Murphy was one of the directors of Clery's--and reminding them that it was he, Boss Murphy, was the real enemy of the people--"the man who caused the lock-out in the days of Jim Larkin"; but the looters, having tasted the blood of theft, were far too avaricious by this time to think of politics in their orgy, and instead began to make a raid on a tobacco-shop, and next a small jeweller's. One could see small boys, too, going to the outskirts of the crowd to sell the booty, so that those who had not the pluck to steal salved their consciences by buying the loot, in most cases getting some fifteen or twenty shillings' worth for as many farthings.

About twelve the Sinn Feiners, without directly encouraging loot, unconsciously helped it by the order to "barricade the side streets," and for hours nothing could be heard but the crash of furniture being pitched into the street below from second, third, and fourth story windows, till the barricades were eight or ten feet high, composed of chairs, tables, desks, sofas, beds, and all kinds of furniture and stores.

In one place, "Kelly's" of Abbey Street, hundreds of cycles and motor cycles were piled up--at least five thousand pounds' worth--and brand-new motor-cars were then run into it, thus forming a steel wall of solid machinery, upon which, later in the "war," the rebels poured petrol and set the whole pile alight, with the result that the neighbouring houses, hotels, and eventually the Hibernian Academy, with its five hundred pictures, were burnt to the ground.

As the early hours of the morning approached the crowd began to disperse, the most enthusiastic singing the latest music-hall songs, and soon O'Connell Street became black and deserted, save for a few specks of candlelight moving about in the G.P.O., which was otherwise in complete darkness, and a few guards marching up and down beneath the great Greek portico.

We retired then to our own room to watch and think. Never to my dying day shall I ever forget those long hours of midnight stillness, broken only by the distant rattle of the rifles in the direction of Phoenix Park, where the two forces had by this time come into contact.

One could easily distinguish the crack of the respective rifles: the Government weapons had a harsher and lower note, but for each "spit" of the rebel guns one could hear the dread rattle of the military machine guns; and then we knew that there could only be one possible end--defeat, ignominious and complete.

Before us, hardly fifty yards away, stood the Post Office, lit up by the street arc lamps in pale blues and greens, and looking for all the world like the drop-cloth of a theatre; and there were we, it might have been the dress circle of some gigantic opera house, and the feeling--the feeling was excruciatingly morbid. We felt like cynical critics sent to review a drama foredoomed to fiasco, yet with the difference that the actors were all real and that the tragedy would be enacted in the blood of hundreds of innocent lives.

We were watching the climax of years of planning and the culminating point of so many lifetimes of idealism, effort, and sacrifice, however mistaken.

We knew they would fail: we knew the penalty of the failure--the traitor's death or the convict's cell; but we were held to the spot, to see just how "dramatic" the fiasco would be.

The very thought was a continuous torture, and it haunted us like a ghost or a madness.

We knew they were our own flesh and blood that had rebelled: it would be strangers who would conquer, and yet we knew that order was right: and this too was a torture-thought.

Hour after hour passed, and when I was not at the window Marsh was on watch, and when he was asleep I mounted my pensive guard.

Incidents never ceased, but the incidents were as nothing compared with the reflections they aroused.

Hour after hour unarmed Volunteers came in from the country, stayed in an hour or so, and then moved out armed. Carts and cars of ammunition and food arrived and gave the password and were admitted. As the early hours of dawn approached we could see milk and bread carts driving up at top speed, the driver with the cold muzzle of a revolver at his ear and his captors seated behind him.

Sometimes flash signals would shoot across the sky, and at others a man at the "Metropole" corner of the G.P.O. would open a basket and release carrier pigeons, so complete was their organization.

At daybreak we found our room covered by a guard, with rifles pointed at our heads, the light shining over their backs full into our faces: but we made no movement, and an hour or so later moved to another portion of the roof.

Next the street was cleared and barbed wire stretched across.

About six o'clock we saw Connolly emerge at the head of a band, and we could hear one of his subordinates call out Mr. Connolly this and Mr. Connolly that, and the commander-in-chief give his orders in a clear, resonant, and fearless voice.

About eight we thought our last hour had come, for, looking towards the base of Nelson's Pillar, we saw men running from a thin blue spiral of smoke rising up, followed by a terrific explosion. They were trying to blow up the monument.

So Tuesday had come, but it found the situation no further advanced: the military had not come: the rebels had had time to entrench and fortify themselves: the city was really fully in their possession: but the battle had begun.

We could now hear it in the direction of the Castle and the Four Courts, and we thought it could only be a matter of a few hours before they would reach Sackville Street, for we could hear the military machine guns raking Dame Street from Trinity College.

As a matter of fact, a machine gun had been hoisted upon the roof of the Hibernian Bank, which commanded the old Houses of Parliament, upon which the rebels had climbed, and in the space of a few seconds wiped out the whole contingent.

As the afternoon wore on Sackville Street began to assume two totally distinct characteristics--one of tragedy and the other of comedy. South of the Pillar the scene might have been a battlefield; north of the Pillar it might have been a nursery gone tipsy, for by this time all the children of the slums had discovered that a perfect paradise of toys lay at their absolute mercy at Lawrence's bazaar, and accordingly a pinafore and knickerbocker army began to lay siege to it, the mothers taking seats upon the stiffened corpses of the lancers' horses to watch the sight of thousands of Union-jacks made into bonfires.

The scene was indescribable for chaos: there were men locked in deadly combat for the sake of Empire and Fatherland, and here were the very children they were fighting for--some dying for--revelling in a children's paradise of toys--balloons, soldiers, rackets, and lollypops, as if it had all been arranged for their special benefit.

An air-gun battalion was now formed of the young highwaymen--two guns each, one on each shoulder--followed up by a toy anti-aircraft gun on wheels, and the whole cavalcade brought up by a Noah's Ark the size of a perambulator.

The captain, about eight years of age, wore a blue silk waistcoat (with its price ticket) and a new grey silk hat. The band then formed up in Indian file, marched up to the G.P.O., saluted majestically, and then impertinently fired their pellets slap-bang into the faces of the insurgents, and then broke up and ran for all they were worth.

All the while, in the opposite direction, Red War was at its height: the rifle-fire along the quays was terrific, and ambulances were rushing backwards and forwards and relays of Volunteers were issuing from the central depôt to the firing-line.

Probably never in the world's history had there been such a strange combination of pathos and humour, and it will haunt everyone who saw it to their dying day: and if mere passive spectators felt the clash of divergent emotions how much more must these, for all their idealism must have appeared to them as crashing down at the first touch of reality.

It was so much the repetition of Emmet's revolt, ending in riot and loot and degradation--nay, worse, it seemed a very pantomime.

Suddenly, as the sound of maxims grew louder, a terrific black cloud rose into the sky. A fire had broken out in the heart of the bazaar and the flames had just reached the fireworks, and for a solid half-hour the whole gaze of rebel and civilian alike was centred upon Lawrence's, which presented the appearance of a diminutive Crystal Palace, with Catherine wheels, Roman candles, Chinese crackers going forth in all directions. At last, in a big blue, green, red and yellow bouquet, the main stock went bodily into the air, scattering the crowd of men and women head-over-heels over the dead horses, and all was still.

What the scene must have been like to the leaders, I do not dare to imagine: but it was so symbolical of the whole eruption that I cannot forbear to describe it.

It was shortly after this--about 4.30--that Mr. Marsh and myself came off the roof, where we had been four solid hours watching, tired, sad, and sick at heart. I was a mass of tingling nerves, for the whole thing was set in the background and framework of the penal days and the times of the famine. He was as cool as an icicle--he even suggested chess, and had a pocket set--but, chess in revolution?--what next!

We were not at a loss for our next course, however, for we had no sooner sat down to lunch--three hours late--than we noticed two of the Sinn Feiners who had long watched us on the roof suddenly come across the street.

For one moment we made sure we were going to be taken out and shot for spies: for we had kept our eyes fixed on them twelve hours, and of course, as the telephone system still worked, could have kept in continual communication with the military authorities--it was the Sinn Feiners' one oversight, to leave the telephone intact--but we were soon reassured, for Mr. Woods came up and announced that the hotel had been taken over by the rebels.

The next moment the dining-room was invaded by a crowd who might have stepped direct off the French Revolution scenes of the "Scarlet Pimpernel" or "The Only Way," but their officer was perfectly courteous.

"Finish your meal, gentlemen," he said; "there is no hurry, but I must ask you to leave with all possible speed." And then, addressing his men, he added: "Now, then, two men to every window; take furniture, tables, chairs, anything, and barricade away--we may have to stand siege."

"Is there any immediate danger?" I ventured; "and if so, where do you wish us to go?"

"No immediate danger whatever, sir, save from your own resistance," was his reply. "Civilians are all perfectly safe: we are only fighting the troops of England.

"There is no cause for excitement or flurry," he added; "you may find our men firing over your heads as you pass into the street, but take no notice.

"These are partly our own signallers giving us warning, and also they are intended to clear the streets of loiterers. You will have safe conduct out of the city by the north, where our guards have orders to allow all citizens to pass--I can only counsel you to move as far from the city as possible, as it is more than probable that our positions will be shelled from the sea at any time, and gas bombs may be used in order to save the buildings, which I need not say would be equally fatal to civilians as to ourselves."

With that he asked the way to the fire-escape and the roof, which one of us showed him, and then we hastily made parcels of anything we wished to take with us.

I took occasion to get into conversation with one of the guards, a rough-looking fellow, upon the aims of the revolution, but could elicit nothing very intelligent, save that "England always hated Ireland, and that now was the time to free her, or within a couple of years everyone would be slaves and conscripts."

There seemed to be a rumour, too, that John Redmond had consented to conscription for Ireland and that it was to be passed at the secret session--but I could gather nothing definite, and before I could get further details a superior officer came and severely reprimanded him for allowing himself to be drawn into conversation at all.

There was nothing for it, therefore, but to march out, and as I could not cross a bridge to get back to the south side of the city, I accepted an offer of hospitality for the night with Mr. Marsh--provided I was willing to walk to Howth for it, nine miles away.

The rain was drizzling as we made our way into Sackville Street. Lawrence's was a blazing furnace, and on the roof we could see a woman and child, caught by the fire, trying to reach the ladders of the fire brigade, which were short; the side wall was tottering, there were screams, but I turned my head: I felt too sick to look, save at the gaping crowd, that even disgusted the rebels, who fired several blank shots among them in the vain attempt to scatter them.

As soon as we reached the Parnell Monument, close to the Rotunda, we turned to the right, and made our way through the long lines of tenements--refugees.

There was quite a string of refugees, as one might have seen fleeing from Ypres, for we knew that the place was now doomed to be shelled--it only remained the chance of a tossed coin where the blows would fall.

The rain poured down, but the seven of us, including the manager of the Coliseum and the manager of the "Imperial," who made up our party, trudged on, on, on. Every cross-road had its Sinn Fein sentries, every point of vantage was loopholed for miles around, and it was a mere stroke of luck that Annesley Bridge had not been blown up and so cut off Amiens Street Station, which held 300 troops, from the north. We only saw two soldiers in nine miles, and these were at a pier-head at Dollymount, half way.

When we arrived at Howth we were wet as fish and black as miners, for we finished the last couple of miles upon a charitable coal-cart.

The next morning was bright and warm as a midsummer day, but in the distance across the bay we could hear the sound of the naval guns thundering out shot and shell.

They had given the rebels till eight to surrender--and they had refused. It was no longer a riot--it was civil war.