Puslapio vaizdai
PDF
„ePub“

"But-but what 's it for?" I asked feebly. "What 's it all about?" "God knows," he answered.

I went to the front of the theater and looked into the street. I could see little knots of men and women and children at the corners of the streets which run at right angles to O'Connell Street, and every now and then some one, suddenly alarmed, would run away. There was a heavy feel in the air, that curious physical sensation of waiting for something to occur which precedes all dreadful events, and, disturbing it ominously, the flat rattle of distant rifles.

There were no policemen anywhere. Mysteriously and swiftly, the whole of the Dublin Metropolitan Police had vanished from their beats.

"Well, this is damned funny!" I said. There is a wide lane at the side of the Abbey Theater which runs parallel to the Liffey and ends at the side of Liberty Hall. While I was standing outside the theater, wondering whether I ought to abandon the performance or not, I heard shouting and the rumble of heavy carts, and looking up the lane, I saw a procession of wagons approaching me. Each wagon was piled high with cauliflower, and was guarded by armed youths. I began to laugh again. There was something irresistibly comical about those wagon-loads of cauliflower, the commissariat of the rebels. We had not yet realized that serious things were about to happen, and so we made jokes! There were funny descriptions of interminable meals of cauliflower-breakfasts, dinners, teas, and suppers of cauliflower. I remembered how sick the soldiers in France and Flanders became of plum and apple jam, and I wondered how long it would be before the rebels became bored with cauliflower.

People turned up at the door of the theater, unaware that anything had happened. Some of the players, unable to catch a tram, came to the stage-door bewildered.

"What's up?" they said, and I answered jocularly:

"Oh, don't you know? There's a rebellion on, and we 're all republicans now!"

IN every tragical happening there is an element of the ridiculous, and it is the business of the artist to strip the ridiculous from the tragical, and leave only the essential tragedy. The realist, such a realist as Mr. Bernard Shaw, insists on showing everything, the ridiculous and the tragical; and so it is that one is puzzled by disturbing laughter in so beautiful a play as "Androcles and the Lion." There was much that was ridiculous in the Dublin rebellion, and all who lived through it can tell many funny stories. I think now of the woman who telephoned to me at the theater to inquire about a friend.

"What's up?" she asked when I had told her that her friend had left the theater to go home, and when I told her that a rebellion was "up," she exclaimed: "Oh, dear! What a day to choose for it! Easter Monday! The people won't enjoy themselves a bit!"

I told the attendants to shut the theater, and went into O'Connell Street. Crowds of people were wandering up and down or standing about in an expectant manner. All round me I could hear men and women asking the question which was general that day in Dublin, "What's it

for?"

I looked across the street, and saw that the windows of the post-office had been. broken. Furniture and sacking were piled behind every window, and stretched on top of these were boys with rifles, lying there, waiting. Some of the rebels were distributing bills, in which the heads of the provisional government announced the establishment of an Irish republic. Some one began to deliver an oration at the base of the Nelson pillar, but the crowd had no taste for oratory, and it did not listen long. There were two flags on the top of the post-office, a green one, bearing the words "Irish Republic," and a tricolor of orange, white, and green; and that was all. One saw volunteer officers, carrying loaded revolvers, passing about their du

ties, instructing pale boys who were acting as sentinels; and when one saw how young they were, there came again into the mind that sense of the ridiculousness of it all, and one thought, "This is all very well, this playing with rebellion and establishing a republic; but wait-just wait until the police catch you at it!" One thought of them as boys who had let their lark run away with their wits. All this joking had gone too far, and presently there would be trouble, and some sorry people would be mumbling excuses to a magistrate. It was as if boys, letting their imaginations feed too fat on penny dreadfuls, had forgotten that they were only pretending to be wild Indians attacking Buffalo Bill, and had suddenly scalped a companion or halved his skull with a tomahawk.

"It'll be over when dinner-time comes," some one said to me. We were all extraordinarily lacking in prescience. We still thought of this thing as a kids' rebellion, a school-boys' escapade. "Silly young asses!" people were saying; "they 'll only get into trouble."

A

I got tired of hanging about O'Connell Street, and so I went home. At the top of Grafton Street I crossed over to the park, and saw that the gates were closed, and barricaded rather ineffectively. man was standing inside the gates, holding a rifle, and looking intently down Grafton Street. Some girls were chaffing him, and asking him if he was not scared to death, and what would his mother say if she could see him, and was he not afraid that she would give him a beating. But he paid no heed to their chaff, though now and then, when some one obscured his vision of the street, he gruffly ordered them away and, if they did not move speedily, threatened to shoot them. "G' long with you!" they would say, still chaffing, but a little uncertain. After all, he might shoot.

turf, with their fingers on the triggers of their rifles, and they, too, like the boys at the post-office, were waiting. I heard a man say to one lad who was digging into the soft earth:

"What in the name of God are you doin' there?" and the lad replied:

[blocks in formation]

"I don't know. I'm supposed to be diggin' a trench, but I think I'm diggin' my grave."

It is said, and I believe it to be true, that none of these lads knew what was to happen that day. Some of them had come up from the country to take part, they imagined, in an ordinary demonstration, a route march. It is said of some of them who were deputed to capture Westland Row station-their task was not told to them until they had reached the stationthat when they heard what was to be done, they sent for a priest, made their confessions to him, and received the host. They told the priest that they were ignorant until that moment of what was about to take place, and he advised them to drop their rifles and uniforms when dusk came and go to their homes.

"Oh, no," they answered; "we joined this thing, and we ought to go on with it." There was much of that kind of young chivalry that week in Dublin. I doubt whether many of the volunteers. funked when the moment came, although they must have felt that they had been led into something like a trap.

In

At the Shelbourne Hotel there was a barricade across the street, composed of motor-cars and vans that had been taken from their owners by the volunteers. side the green there was much movement and hurrying to and fro. At each gate there was a small group of armed sentries, who challenged every vehicle that passed. If the vehicle was found to be above suspicion, it was allowed to pass on. If the driver of it failed to halt when challenged several times, he was fired on.

I went into the house where I was living. It overlooks the green, and from my bedroom I had as clear a view as was

possible to any one. I saw women walking about inside the green, and I saw three

[graphic]
[merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

Photograph by Underwood and Underwood
Patrick H. Pearse, president of the short-lived Irish republic

[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

possible to conduct any rebellion, and many high and chivalrous things were done by them and their followers. They strove to fight, as closely as they could, in accordance with the laws of civilized warfare. But the killing of these policemen at the castle and the Unitarian church were acts of murder, for these civil servants were unarmed, defenseless, while their opponents carried loaded rifles. I believe, indeed, that much of what we call atrocity in warfare, civil or international, is largely the result of fright and nervous strain, the panic act of men who are “rattled"; and it is very probable that the murder of the policemen was due to an attack of nerves. But whatever the cause of it may have been, it stained a singularly clean record. The behavior of the rebels to their prisoners was exemplary. An old colonel who was in their hands for the better part of a week subsequently stated that he had been treated with exceptional kindness, and a subaltern who was interned in the post-office asserted that his captors were very considerate to him.

outside the village, and when we reached it, he looked at it for a few moments, and then, to my disgust, took a bill out of his pocket and stuck it into a crack in the stones. "I may as well do a little propaganda," he said. The bill had “Votes for Women" on it. But when all the small irritations one had in his presence were accounted for, there remained this, that he was a man of great integrity and courage, and men of integrity and courage are so rare in the world that it is a calamity to have lost this man in the miserable way in which he was lost.

It was while I was looking at the pool of congealed blood that I saw Francis. Sheehy Skeffington. I had known him fairly well for some time. He was a man of immense energy and vitality. Once he walked from Dublin into Wicklow and back, covering fifty miles in one day. His honesty was superlative, and his courage was leonine. I think of him as a man overruled by intellect. He was governed by logic, and he seemed incapable of understanding that life is a wayward thing, that men are moody, that humanity cannot be scheduled or set out in terms of an equation; and this submission of his to intellect robbed him of any capacity to act practically in affairs. Had he been a witty man, he would have resembled Bernard Shaw. But he was not a witty man; he was almost totally devoid of a sense of humor. I think, too, he was completely devoid of any feeling for tradition, any sense of reverence. Once when I was living in a Welsh village I met him. I went with him one day to see a cromlech

He came up to me, and we talked about the rebellion. I was full of anger, because I saw in it the wreck of the slowly maturing plans for the better ordering of Irish life; but his emotion was different.

"I'm against all this fighting," he said. "More and more I am inclining toward the Tolstoian position." He spoke of the rebellion as "folly, but it 's noble folly," and declared that it was a hopeless enterprise. He went off, walking in that habitual quick, nervous way of his, which seemed to indicate that he could never walk with sufficient swiftness. I went home, and sat in the window, looking out on the park and the passing people. The dusk gathered about the trees in the green, and a film of blue mist enveloped us. Behind the College of Surgeons, which faced my side of the green, the setting sun sent shafts of golden light shimmering up the heavens. There was hardly any wind, and the tricolor on the college fluttered listlessly. The evening became quiet. The crowds which had moved about the city all day in a holiday mood, treating the rebellion as a jolly entertainment provided by benevolent persons for their amusement, had dispersed to their homes, carrying with them not the mood of merriment, but the mood of alarm, of anxious anticipation.

One could hardly have felt otherwise then. All day the rebels had been in possession of the city. The Government seemed to have thrown up the sponge. There was not a policeman to be seen, or

[merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

The Republix was proclamed by a penter, hack was prominently displayed in Dua

At 9.3. this morning the fallowing Mac men was ade by Commandant General, P. I. Prave

[ocr errors]

The slab Republic - proclamed in Dublin Sinnday. 24th April, at 12 ADA Sally with the base of the prociation of the Frommal Govern the Dublin Diri of Arey of the Repunia, the lush • including Volunteer, Creten Army, H-bernuan Rites, and sher calor, occupied dominating points in the The G.P.O. en serred at 12 noon, the Cate was ached of the same moment, and and hery alterwards the Four Courts were occupied есесер Their troops bald the City Hall and dominate they the Case Attacks were immediately commenced by by B cab forces and were everywhere reguled At the momant of writing this report, (9.30 am. Tuesday) the Republican forces hold all their postions and the British forces have nowherd There has been heary und

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

MORE PIRACY

The condition of affairs illustrated in the flow. ing chestend itam" The Advocate," a New Yout Lab Redmondire paper, is mess at all unlike poracy on the high res Inslager issue to hand "The Advorate" says

"ure the Entah friment began to see The mad we have been intoaned by woman of agr Swedish aquariances thaqake Title cheques ther have sent to the old tolkar home have never pached the destimation. If this be true, any que rack hat no reag to doubt t, then the British Ges of

and stands buvicted of the men conemptible kind of peny arceny which the crit the world can how, Sweden is just now expe riencing a depression in all kinds of business owing to being cut off from other neutral nations by Great Britain, and consequently little help frand their exiled brethren is much needed in counties Swetu bouchalds. Now, it may be asked what Great Britain hopes to accomplish by preventing the exiled Swedes from helping their sadering kn to seek

[ocr errors]

in to her interest to add by

The reason is mos Socialist party is very strang Sweden, and o the difficulty of the maves to make et ment. Now, growing stronger in proportion to the increase Great Britain knows that were it not for the oppo the Socialises Saeden would long since have errol the war on the side of Germany, hence it form basis the moral to the SeristicsERY BRATS at her c cana ins of the energy bung much mats numerous power. Therefore in robbing than those on the Repus ante The Republican the marks of there livele cheques he is posting se forces everywhere we ngiting with spending people of the means of siding over the cull season, and expects that, driven by necessity, many in their exstanny, And thus Sweden's continued neutrality ill be cured. The the immian our Swedah ngantanes pire of England's cheving conduct in the rear. For the hero of our phor busen astere, let us hope the case not as bad as it is hard to be."

allery. The copulare of Dublin are plainly with the Repub, and the officers and men are everywhere cheat! as they march through the The whole centre ut he city in in the hands of the R public, whese fag fits from the G.P.O. Cand General P. H. Pearse is cos. ading in chief of the Army of the Republic and

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small]
[merged small][ocr errors][merged small]
[ocr errors]

England would be constancy urritated by the lefty moral utterances German statesmen who would quite merely, no

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

HAL. And not only would the Enginhman have to listen to cofumant flow of speeches of this wort he would find a respectable official Pros veces bought over by the Government to say the same kind of things ever and over, every day of the weak. the low wow, we que te per

hame from school with new ideas of history.. They would ask bim if it was true that until the Germans came England hat span an early country, constantly engaged in civil war. The object of every schepfbook would be to make the English child grow up in the notion that the history of by county was ʼn chẳng tu forgot, and the the one bright spot in it you the fact that it had been conquered by calturol Gitrm my.”

"If there was a revolt, German soruna » won!? deliver grave speeches about disloyalty," "inpraticade," "reckiem agitors who would rain their country's prosperity.... Promion whic ould be encamp in every beach-the Fashi Pra freecum, they would expur, be caned in Germany, or to fight 1-06 Chiude – was the only real treciom, and therefare England in order to come to the aid of German morsiny, should English edition came to blows with 1." was f.ee. They would post to the Rushing -England would be exported to abanden ber always at farm and collegen They would Bwn Ex in offer le immate the genius of her poly point to the continent of V.Pich conquerers, to forget her own history for a beger brary, to give up her own language for ani. was permite, it spine of its ceptable iner der ha +--!" lae-in acther words, destroy har now, to sit fa a permanent maarity in the Reich bolds one by one, had put in ebooie p'amo

[blocks in formation]

a soldier or any person in authority. At ten o'clock that morning there had been a Government and policemen and soldiers; at eleven o'clock all these had disappeared. There was looting in O'Connell Street, some of it extraordinarily ludicrous.

There was one looter who had stolen a dress-suit from a shop near O'Connell Bridge. He went into an abandoned tram-car, stripped his rags off, and then put on the dress-suit. When he reappeared, swaggering up and down the street, he was wearing brown boots, a dress-suit, a Panama hat, and he was carrying a lady's sunshade. The rebels tried to prevent looting. I saw them making the attempts; but their efforts were ineffectual, and all that day (Monday) and all Tuesday the looting went on ridiculously.

Although the Government had mysteriously vanished, and there were no policemen to arrest looters, one did not feel that victory was with the rebels, nor did they themselves think victory was with them. That anxious, waiting look had marked the rebels' faces all day, and now something of dread came to the larking crowd; and as the night fell, the jokes ceased, the

laughter died out, and silence came. At seven o'clock the streets were nearly empty. I looked out of my window and saw shadow-shapes moving swiftly homeward, huddling close to the houses. The rebel sentries still guarded the gate of the green which faced toward Merrion Street, and through the gloaming I could detect the figures of boys and women hurrying about their business in the camp. A cab came down the east side of the green, and the sentries challenged the driver; but he would not stop, though they called "Halt!" a dozen times. Then they fired on him. The horse went down instantly, and the driver, abandoning it, leaped from the box of his cab and flew down Merrion Street. The poor beast, sprawling on its haunches, tried to struggle to its feet, but fell back as often as it rose. While it lay there, struggling and kicking, a motor-car came down that side of the green, and the driver of it, too, was challenged, and he, also, refused to halt, and again the sentries fired. I was leaning out of the window to see what happened, and I laughed, for the man who was in the car with the driver yelled out the moment he was hit: "Oh, I 'm dead! I'm dead!"

« AnkstesnisTęsti »