IRISH REBELLION

Evening Post, Volume XCI, Issue 146, 21 June 1916, Page 20

IRISH REBELLION

AN ABORTIVE RISING

THE FIGHT FOR DUBLIN

REBELS BARRICADE THE

STREETS.

SNIPING FROM THE ROOFS.

LONDON, 4th May.

There is ample evidence' to show that, the rebellion in Ireland, which broke out on Easter Monday, was hatched in Germany. The object of Germany vtas to create a situation which would compel the British Government to cancel its arrangements for despatching more troops to .France, in pursuance of the plan of the Allies for a general'offensive which will compel the Germans and Austrians to fight on all fronts at the same time. Had the rebellion in Ireland met with mor-e success, there is little doubt that German troops and artillery would have-been despatched to Ireland to assist the rebels. Whether the transports carrying these soldiers and guns would have been successful in evading British warships ia a m.ittai of doubt. But the brief bombardment of the English ports of Lowestoft and Yarmouth by German battle cruisers a few hours after the outbreak of revolution in Ireland was part of the German plan for1 aiding tho rebellion. It was intended to draw a strong British naval squadron from its station in fruitless pursuit of the German, ships. What would have , happened had the German plans worked out successfully can only be a matter of conjecture. Thu direction which British oflicial conjecture has taken is indicated by the fact that since the outbreak of rebellion in Ireland additional stops have been taken to meet any attempt to land troops on the eaet coast of England and.1 any attempt to attack London by land. But everything went wrong with the Irish rebellion, and this affected the German plans. Sir Roger Casement, who was to be the soul of the rebellion, .was captured as soon as he landed, on the west coast of Ireland, near Tralee. The disguised tramp steamer, which was carrying arms 'and ammunition from. Germany for the rebels, was intercepted off the coast by a British patrol boat, after Sir Roger Casement, had landed. The sea. was too rough to enable the patrol boat to send a prize crew on board the disguised ship, but she was ordered to follow the patrol boat into Queenstown, and while on the way the German crew scuttled her and took to the boats. A FORGED DOCUMENT. In the events which helped to develop the revolution a forged document purporting to be a translation of a secret order in cipher, filed in Dublin Castle, plays an important part. According to Uiis order, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (Lord Wimborne) and the Chief Secretary (Mr. Birrell) had made arrangements for a great coup, which would suppress the Sinn Fein organisation. Dublin was to be placed in a' state of siege, military law was to be proclaimed, the Archbishop of Dublin and the Lord Mayor of the city were to be kept prisoners in their official residences, and all the members of certain specified bodies were to be arrested, and also the Executive Committee of tho National Volunteers, and the Coisde Gnotha of the Gaelic League. Alderman Thomas Kelly, of the Dub- | | lin Corporation, who has been a prominent member of the Sinn Fein, read out this document at a meeting of the Corporation. Needless to say, •Alderman Kelly believed the document to be genuine, in spite of official assurance that it was a forgery. His line of reasoning was that, such a damaging document having been made public, the authorities, in order to protect themselves, were bound to brand it as a forgery. And in this line of reasoning he was supported by thousands of other Irishmen. Tho idea that a brutal British Govern- | ment was again attacking the liberties | of the Irish people was sedulously fostered, and it won over hundreds of recruits to the rebel standard. THE REBELS' PLANS. The Irish rebellion was timed to begin at noon on Easter Monday (24th April), j The time was well chosen, for on account of the holidays the rebels encoun- I tered less resistance in seizing the chief buildings in Dublin than would have been the case under normal conditions. (Offices, factories, and shops were closed, • and the streets were filled with holiday, makers. The races at Fairyhouse and the Royal Dublin Society's spring show at Ball's Bridge, outside the city, attracted large numbers of the townspeople. In order to allay any suspicion which the authorities might have of impending trouble, the orders issued for parades of Irish Volunteers on Easter Monday were publicly cancelled on Easter Saturday. It is believed that the notification of the cancellation of theseparades' was in reality a signal that the rebellion was to begin on Monday. The rebel forces consisted chiefly of men of the Citizens' • Army and the Irish Volunteers. The Citizens' Army was composed of general labourers and transport workers. It was originally raised by James Larkin, the leader of the strike of transport workers which took place in Dublin in 1913, but Larkin was in America when the rebellion took place. The Irish Volunteers are members of the Sinn Fein, organisation. Originally, this force was raised as a reply to the Ulster Volunteers, raised by the antiHome Rulers to resist the enforcement of Home Rule in the Ulster provinces, but the Sinn Fein members of the committee and the Irish Nationalist members could not agree. The result was that many men seceded from the Irish Volunteers and formed the National Volunteers. The latter force acknowledged allegiance to the Irish National Party, of whom Mr. Jolm Redmond is the head. The Nationalist Volunteers took no part in the rebellion. . The plan of the rebels was to obtain possession of the capital of Ireland' by seizing the administrative quarters of the Government and also the chief public buildings. The chief weakness of the rebellion lay in the fact that the rebels had no artillery and only an insignificant number of machine guns. Whether they had plans for. obtaining artillery has not been disclosed, but the rebel leaders must have known that without the assistance of artitlerv they could not hope to hold for more than a few days any position they captured. As soon as the anthoritim were able to bring lip troops and guns the rebels must give way. THE FIRST SHOT. The rebels come into Dublin by tram, train, and bus, with tho ordinary holidaymakers, and it was assumed that they were going to spend the day in carrying out peaceful manoeuvres, as they had often done on previous holiI days. They were dressed in heathergreen uniforms, with slouch hats. They carried rifles, bandoliers, and packs. j The first shot was fired shortly before ! noon, at a, policeman on duty at one of ! the gates of Dublin Castle. The upper court of the castle is the town residence lof the Lieutenant-Governor, but he was lat the Vice-regal Lodge in Phoenix Park when tlie revolutiou started. The lower emirUs of Dublin CwtJe «i.rt» ihft AdmJm>< guartcts pf the Government Dg-

partments. The policeman-saw a body of men in the Irish Volunteer uniform approaching the giite, and as he was accastomed to seeing armed volunteers in the streets of Dublin on their way to and from parade, lie did not thinß that they had any intention of attacking him. The tragedy that followed is thus described by a.n eyewitness. Mr. Doig, the editor of the Dublin Mail:— " I looked out of tho window and saw twenty or thirty of the' volunteers marching along the street to the Castle just opposite us. "At the Castle gate was a big Dublin policeman, whom I knew well —a jolly fellow ho was, who chaffed all the lassies and played with all the little children. He held up his hand as they tried to enter the place. I could see his lips moving as he spoke to .them. And I knew well he would be saying, all in that genial way of. his, something like, 'Now, boys, you mustn't, try to get in, for you know you should be wanting nothing here at all.' "Aud suddenly the whole lot of them, who were standing in line, stepped back a pace, levelled their rifles, firing all together, and shot him dead. I nev»r saw .the like. A priest. rushed up and held ■up his hand for them to stop, and then stooped down" to pray for the policeman on the ground. But the men went on firing again into the Castle."* But the attemptj.to capture the Castle j failed. Sir Matthew Nathan, "Undersecretary for Ireland, who was inside his office in tht Castle when the firing commenced, soon organised <tii ■♦f/octive defence. He withdrew the few soldiers available into the building, after ordering all the gates to be closed and bolted. Apparently the rebels realised that to press the attack would oause them considerable loss. '.: But, though they did riot force the attack, they kept guard from the roofs of buildings which commanded the Castle yard, and they shot at everyone who came into view. It was not until late at night that the siege of the Castle was raised by the arrival of troops from the military camp at Curragh, 30 miles away. . REBEL HEADQUARTERS. The rebels had no difficulty in seizing the General Post Office in Sockvillestreet, in the heart of the city. Their object was to cut off all communication between Dublin and the outer world. It is believed that many of'the staff at the Post Office were in sympathy with the rebels and took part in the rebellion. The entrances to the building werequickly seized, and the windows were barricaded for the purpose of defence. The Post Office constituted the headnuarters o£ th© rebels duriii°- the few days that the new Republican Government was in existence. The telegraphic instruments were smashed and the installations destroyed. But the Tebels were not quick enough in seizing the telephone exchange, and news of the rebellion was sent by telephone to' the Lieutenant-Governor, who was at the Vice-regal Lodge in Phoenix Park, and also .to the'military camp at Curragh. The Four Courts, as the law court buildings are called, were also seized by the rebels. The bulky volumes .in the law library were taken down and wore used .to barricade the windows, loopholes being left to enable the rebels to fire at anyone who approached. Other buildings which they seized, practically without opposition, were the City Hall, the tramway. power station, the gas works, n big biscuit factory, a flour mill, the largest bakery in the city, arid three whisky distilleries. From the distilleries they took grain for filling sandbags, with which to make barricades; the men at the bakery were set to work baking bread for the rebel army, and the stock of the biscuit factory was seized for provisioning the rebel forces. An attack, made on the Bank of Ireland was not successful. A party of rebels approached ■ the bank at noon, with the object of overcoming the small body of soldiers with--which the bank is usually, guarded, but they met with an unexpected check. Opposite the hank ■is Trinity College, and at the collego there is an officers' training corps among the students. These young men became aware of the attack on the bank, and,' arming themselves with rifles, . they drove the rebels back. Among the important strategical points seized by the rebels was St. Stej phen's Green, a large square in the most' fashionable quarter of the city. Oh one side of the green is the Shelbourne Hotel, and on another is tne Royal College of Surgeons. Those members of the public who were in the green when the rebels arrived at noon were,turned out and the iron'gates were locked. The rebels then began to 'dig trenches in the park. Motor cars and other vehicles were commandeered by them and piled up in the streets round the green to form barricades. They seized the Shelbourne Hotel and the Royal College of Surgeons. The inmates lof the hotel were Kept prisonors, md from the roof of the building the rebels swept the streets with rifle fire. SNIPERS' TACTICS.For some hours the fighting consisted of sniping on the part, of the rebels posted in buildings and houses which commanded the streets. There was no organised oppositioii to them, for troops were not then, available in sufficient numbers to check them. "The murder of mean wearing the King's uniform was the first aim of every rebel," states i newspaper correspondent. "Soldiers who happened to be in the streets at 1 p.m. on Monday were shot down in cold, blood. The details of some of these crimes are almost beyond belief. One wounded officer, his arm in a sling, found himself confronted by an armed •desperado clothed in the green livery of Sinn Fein. ' You're not worth wasting a cartridge on,' said the renegade, '1 can settla you with tha butt.' And he clubbed the officer over the head. Several soldiers were killed in the environs of Dublin Castle. An officer was shot as, he looked from a window of the Shelbourne Hotel in the first moments of the rising. A private's brains were blown out when the storm .broke round him in Sackville-street." Several army officers were killed when returning from the races at Fairyhouse. One officer stated that while driving in a motor car through Grafton-street he was fired on five times. He escaped bs; ing hit, but a friend who was sitting' next to him was killed. " The. rebel snipers showed ingenuity as well as persistence," states .Mr. Percival Phillips, in the Daily Telegraph. " They found excellent cover in the thickly-built tenement districts, where they lurked among the chimney-pots. rft fired from curtained windows, and in the solidly-built warehouses and factory buildings, which were proof against everything except artillery . attacks. Some of them settled.down in one sniping post on Monday afternoon and remained there until 'they were dug out' or killed; but apparently many roved | about, slipping through back aOeys and courtyards to a fresh position when the old one became untenable. During the first 48 hours of fighting the troops reEeatedly cleared a street or group of ouses of snipers, only to be subjected to fresh attacks a little later, when the enemy succeeded, in returning midetected. "A wary sharpshooter frequently 'nursed' his job with such care that one shot every three or four hours repaid him for his patience if the target were a man in khaki. They would wait all morning to kill a soldier. House tops were the favourite sniping posts, because of the wide range, of view and the ease with which the Tebels could shift from onn point to tinothw. But' they hntl boss, .utilising every, oilier kind of. cover,,

Crouching behind quayside cranes, they tried to pick off the exposed crews of incoming vessels.. Tall chimneys and church spires also afforded choice sites for snipers.

"Almost without exception the snipers were in civilian clothes, and therefore indistinguishable from thousands of citizens vrho remained loyal. This increased the difficulty of rooting .thorn out. A rebel could enjoy potting at soldiers or at other civilians for some hours, then emerge from his lair, retire deviously from the suspected house, , and mingle with n. group of men, or boldly ask the nearest officer for a pass through the lines—usually to rejoin his 'wife' or 'mother' in another part of the city. Spies playing this game were able to locate military posts and gather other information for the house-top snipers before the cordon became tight enough effectively to control every individual inside. Women undoubtedly helped the nefarious work. By pleading the necessity of going through the lines to. buy food the relatives and friends of the rebels kept them posted as to the developments in that particular locality." SHOPS LOOTED. There was a great deal of looting from the shops in Sackville-street. The rebels were engaged on more serious work than robbing the shops, and they left that to the rabble of the city. " Shattered glass littered the streets everywhere, and the footpaths of Sackville-street were one wild welter of disorder and debris," states a correspondent of one of the London papers. ''Troops of tatterdemalion boys and girls were having the time of their lives. The more youthful I of them were smeared with butterscotch and toffee arid chocolate from head to foot, and carried parcels of similar confectionery and other sweets. Young fellows by the dozen were in possession of packets, and boxes of cigarettes, and the air wiis fragrant with the odour ■of choice ,cigars designed for other lips. Boxes of c aws were offered to passers-by for »' shilling, while many old ladies wero festooned with necklaces and trinkets looted from jewellers' shops. Valuable gold watches were proffered at 10s, beautiful rings at os to 7s 6d. Perambulators and baby cart* were a glut in the market, and so were boots and slides, -of which latter 27,000 pairs wero looted from the shop of Messrs. Tyler, and a still larger number from Mailfield's and the Saxone establishments. Even amidst all the tragedy a touch of comedy was not wnnting. It was provided by the spectacle of scores of robust and elderly women squatted on the footpath endeavouring to compress their too ample feet into fashionable boots and' shoes. Lawrence's huge premises were looted from top to tjottom, and in sheer wantonness the crowd lighted n huge bonfire of valuable things of which they could not make use. From the up- ' per windows inflammable materials were flung out on the blazs below." There were a number of women among the rebels. There were women to nurse the wounded, having been previously trained m "first aid." In the. building? that had been seized there were nlsn women who cooked for the- rebels. But women were seen taking an active p;n« in the fighting. There were ■ armed women among the rebels entrenched in St. Stephen's Green. Most of them carried naval revolvers. Mr. Frederic); Shand, a London business man, who was in Dublin during the rebellion, declares that an army officer who was walking along a quiet thoroughfare on Monday afternoon, was shot by a woman, who came up behind him and fired at his back. THE TROOPS ARRIVE. Early on Tuesday ■ morning troops began to arrive in Dublin from the camp at Curragh. The first operation was to draw a cordon round that part of the city held by the rebels. The Shelbourne Hotel, which had been seized . by the rebels, was taken by the soldiers by an attack in the rear, -nnd with the machine-gun'mounted on the roof of tho building the troops were able to dominate the position of the rebels in St. Stephen's Green. But it was not until Wednesday, when the troops from Curragh were, reinforced by . detachments sent' from England, that energetic, systematic operations against the rebels were commenced. There was desperate fighting at scattered points, and gradually tho area of the city held by tho rebels was diminished. The arrival of artillery brought a turn in the tide. The street barricades of .the rebols were blown to pieces by the guns, and. the robels then retreated to the large buildings jwhich they had seized on Easter Monday. Tho street fighting developed into sniping on the part of both rebels and troops. The artillery was turned on the strongholds occupied by the rebels, and these buildings were partially demolished. Fires broke out as a result of the shelling, and many shops and houses were burned down. By Friday the rebels realised, that their position was hopeless. ;Many of them had been told that as soon ns the rebellion broke out, German troops would be landed in Ireland to assist them. But there was no sign of the Germans. After four days of rebellion the rebels began to hoist the white flag and to surrender themselves in batches. Patrick Pearse, the commandant-gene-ral, and James Connolly* his chief lieutenant, were captured. In order to avoid further waste of live, Pearse, when in captivity, issued' an order advising his men to surrender. By Sunday the rebellion, which had lasted a week, was practically at an end! The people of Dublin were virtually prisoners in their houses during the week that the rebellion lasted. They were afraid to go into the Streets for fear. of being shot by the snipers. All the public services were suspendedthere were no mails, no newspapers, and no means of communication with ■ the outside world. People were unable to obtain provisions except at the risk of their lives. The shops were unable' to obtain supplies of provisions' after they had exhausted their stocks. The milkman, the baker, the batcher, the grocer,, and the rest of the tradespeople ceased to call while the rebellion was in pro-, gress. No work was done for a week, and no wages were earned. Ships laden with provisions had to be sent to "tie city for tho relief of the inhabitants, and the provisions were distributed by the military authorities to tho people.—Melbourne Age. correspondent.