The artillery settled the question of field operations. Like wise men the irregulars would not face guns when they had none themselves. I had a talk with the mate of the ship which was commandeered to carry soldiers round from Dublin to Cork, and run the gauntlet up the river. No one was particularly anxious to show up on deck, he said, in that part of the journey, and on landing no particular resistance was offered, although the guns were no use once the boat was brought alongside the landing stage at Passage, just below Cork. Although they made no fight in Cork, the irregulars did enormous damage. There are two bridges in Cork across two branches of the river similar to the Cataraqui bridge. It was attempted to blow up both of them, but the job was bungled and only caused superficial damage. Motor-trucks were trundled into the river to prevent their being used for pursuit. For 'the boys were now in the hills,' the position for which their soul had long panted.

If the irregular strongholds in Dublin fell rapidly, the 'fellar on the roof' is keeping his end up to this day. I crossed over to Dublin from Scotland a fortnight later, and thereafter it was a nightly experience to hear the crack of revolvers, the answering shot of a sentry, and the buzz of a machine-gun as a patrol wagon rolled up. I was in Dublin when the funerals of Griffith and Collins took place, but somehow neither of them had the note of intense feeling which characterized that of Harry Boland, De Valera's lieutenant in America. He was accidentally shot when resisting arrest outside Dublin. He had a generous, open-hearted nature, and was loved by all who knew him. His death was the first token of how brother's hand was against brother; for no one could bring himself to regard Boland as an enemy. The walls of Dublin were plastered with anonymous 'Harry Boland Murdered' inscriptions, and his associates gave him a state-funeral. I ran into it just north of Trinity College, and witnessed it standing between two Yorkshire bandsmen of a British regiment. Their comments showed a strange ignorance of the situation. The funeral had a pathos and a note of deep personal sorrow intensely Irish in its atmosphere. After the hearse walked about fifty priests, then a section of nurses, their faces flung

up defiantly; then came carriages with notables such as Count Plunkett and Miss McSweeny, then a long file of general mourners headed by men of the Republican army: young and old, male and female were there, a thin mourning line with tragic sorrow written on their faces, marching through silent crowded streets all tense with feeling. It passed, and street cars, brewers' drays, motors, side-cars resumed their daily round.

It was said that in the engagements going on there was much firing but little shooting, each side being averse to shedding Irish blood. This was not so in the ambushes, notoriously when a party having shot down three of a party of Free Staters, promptly surrendered, and strangely enough were spared. The trains coming into Dublin now often discharged half a dozen coffins. Feeling began to harden and there were ugly reprisals.

To an outsider the puzzle was how hostilities were being waged in this strange Fronde. The Irish papers lost all sense of proportion in headlines of 'Frightful Slaughter', followed up by details of two men wounded. There were two factors in the situation: an aversion on the part of the Free Staters to fire on their fellow-countrymen. The Irregulars had less compunction, but it must be remembered that the Regulars being much stronger and better armed were able to exercise clemency, which was also good policy. I think Collins insisted on this line of action. Certainly after his death there was a stiffening up all round. The other factor was that the Regulars had artillery and the untrained irregulars naturally enough would not face artillery. It was said that ex-service men figured freely on both sides, but I never saw one who had the appearance among Free State troops. Both sides had mostly boys from the plough and the potato-patch, or else what one would call the undergraduate type. But the chief feature of hostilities was the destruction of communications, which at the same time paralysed business and stopped the holding of markets or the movement of produce. A fever epidemic in the wild country west of the Corrib could not be coped with at all, for not a road was open in the neighbourhood. A doctor who went in would take two days to get out. Adequate nurs

ing or the moving of patients was out of the question. Travelling was a most expensive luxury, as was discovered by many Irish-Americans. Twenty-five pounds was asked for a motor from Queenstown to Limerick, and I will say that the owner must have underestimated the risk of losing his car, or have valued the car at about five pounds only. An Ontario priest told me that when he attempted to get out of Cork and through the irregular lines, his car was dismantled and he left to walk back the seven miles he had come.

Perhaps a description of the return of a family not unknown in these parts will illustrate things better than generalities. As the steamer was sailing in about a fortnight it became imperative to think of a return from the crags and bogs of Connemara. The first stage was by road to Galway, some fifty miles. Thence the railway was open, though irregular raids were seeking continually to cut the line between Galway and the Shannon. There was the sea route, but it did not meet with enthusiastic support. Word was heard of a steamer that came up Lough Corrib, but when we proposed to take her we found she had gone. Her captain had a safeconduct for the outward journey as he was carrying the necessities of life, but once he had landed the stout he deemed it prudent to return in the dark, as he had been fired at in the narrows from the opposite shore. Eventually we had to go by road, which every one saw was now impassable. For fifteen miles all went smoothly, till one drew near Oughterard, the Irregular stronghold. Something apparently was up, as columns of smoke were rising in the air. The driver became a little perturbed. I had been puzzled by a habit of his of continually 'bumping saddle' as he sat behind his wheel. He seemed to do it whenever the road crossed a bridge or culvert. Now I understood. He was looking to see if the far curve of the arch was broken or blown up. After that I looked as carefully as he did. He now stopped the car. 'I'll just put this can of petrol in the tank', he said. "There's no use the Republicans having it anyway.' He did so and we resumed. 'A-UH' rang out sharp in the air, and three boys in their teens were covering us with rifles, about twenty yards off. Failure to realize that 'A-UH' was not simply 'Halt!' but 'hands up'

might have cost me dear, but all ended well. 'We must search th' car-r', said the captain, who had now come out in the open, while a small flibberty-gibbet with a large cap and a rookrifle in his hand also took the wall in a flying leap. On my previous journey I had been convoying a large ham, but this time it was more or less 'cantabit vacuus', although 'have ye any important papers, maps or documents?' one felt might lead to trouble. 'What's that now?' said the captain. "That's Dante's Purgatory,' I said. 'Be gob, ye may need it yet!' Searching, however, soon breaks down as soon as the searchers begin to realize they look rather foolish, and shortly afterwards we were on the road again.

After Oughterard the navigating difficulties began. First the road was blocked by a big tree. But after a day or two traffic streams round these obstacles just as water evades a dam. Into a gentleman's demesne and out through the stables brought us on the high road, though at one patch of the road we had to lighten the car as the traffic had worn through the metalling into the black juice of the bog. Another detour was needed some five miles later and thereafter we were off the high road for two hours. Sometimes we came round a corner and saw a tree across the road. The wheel-marks showed us that a detour was practicable through a field. Another time we bumped over a ruined culvert which made stepping stones across a stream instead of arching it. Another time the loan of a plank and a little road-making enabled us to climb into and out of a trench across the thoroughfare. These little obstacles had created a new industry in the district, the boosting of cars out of ditches; but now it was languishing as few people had any petrol left, and owners of big luxurious cars no longer risked them on the road.

Galway, when we reached it, was full of stranded IrishAmericans, and the situation had elements of comedy. These people had subscribed millions to free Ireland, and now that they had come over to see the work of their hands-in the words of one: "They told me it was an island of saints and it's nothing but a land of lunatics'. Thus they spoke in the barparlours of little hotels in Galway, Limerick, Cork, Mallow. 'I've been paying a pound a week for the cause of Irish free

dom', said a man from Johannesburg, 'but no more for me'. Jarveys and car drivers skinned them, of course. 'Heaven help the soft Saxon in the hands of game-keeper or sidecardriver', says Mr. Regan in his classic on Irish fishing, and I confirmed the remark with a shoe-shine man on Stephen's Green in Dublin. But there is always an obverse to every medal. I recall a coal strike ten years ago in Cork when the price of coal soared nightly, and one dealer went on heroically serving out coal to the poor at the price that they could pay. So when Cork hotels were recouping themselves for raids and ruin, a certain innkeeper took in a stranded party of fifteen Irish-Americans none too well off and charged them all their stay only cost price. 'An' he was a Prodestant', said the narrator with admiration. I must say in my personal experience that I met honest dealing throughout. None the less, it was certain Irish-Americans who were keeping up the hopes of the Republicans. You would meet a Mr. X. with the earnest pale-faced manner of a typical pacifist, incredible of compromise, so naïve that he would be completely taken in by the pious aspirations of an opposition journal like the Daily News. He and such as he had made this situation possible. Yet he seemed astounded that he might have to run the gauntlet of street firing on his way back to the Shelburne Hotel at night..

Again it is the Rev. Mr. T who has political ambitions in the Middle West and is mixed up with some organization like Cohalan's. In a week he is doubling the rôle played by Father Flanagan at the beginning of the peace negotiations. He will run into the mayor of an important American city and between them they will seem to represent a body of public opinion in the States. It is impossible for the Free State to ignore them, impossible for anyone but Griffith, and Griffith is dead. The Irish are of course still humourists, and perhaps that is why when you go to a government office in Ireland the door is half opened by a soldier who interviews you with a revolver in his hand.

The natural question is whether the Free State will survive its troubles. I believe it will undoubtedly. These experiences have their good side in bringing the normal Irishman