It is half-past three o’clock, and from my window the Republican flag can still be seen flying over Jacob’s factory.  There is occasional shooting, but the city as a whole is quiet.  At a quarter to five o’clock a heavy gun boomed once.  Ten minutes later there was heavy machine gun firing and much rifle shooting.  In another ten minutes the flag at Jacob’s was hauled down.

During the remainder of the night sniping and military replies were incessant, particularly in my street.

The raids have begun in private houses.  Count Plunkett’s house was entered by the military who remained there for a very long time.  Passing home about two minutes after Proclamation hour I was pursued for the whole of Fitzwilliam Square by bullets.  They buzzed into the roadway beside me, and the sound as they whistled near was curious.  The sound is something like that made by a very swift saw, and one gets the impression that as well as being very swift they are very heavy.

Snipers are undoubtedly on the roofs opposite my house, and they are not asleep on these roofs.  Possibly it is difficult to communicate with these isolated bands the news of their companions’ surrender, but it is likely they will learn, by the diminution of fire in other quarters that their work is over.

In the morning on looking from my window I saw four policemen marching into the street.  They were the first I had seen for a week.  Soon now the military tale will finish, the police story will commence, the political story will recommence, and, perhaps, the weeks that follow this one will sow the seed of more hatred than so many centuries will be able to uproot again, for although Irish people do not greatly fear the military they fear the police, and they have very good reason to do so.

CHAPTER VIII.

The insurrection is over.

The Insurrection is over, and it is worth asking what has happened, how it has happened, and why it happened?

The first question is easily answered.  The finest part of our city has been blown to smithereens, and burned into ashes.  Soldiers amongst us who have served abroad say that the ruin of this quarter is more complete than any thing they have seen at Ypres, than anything they have seen anywhere in France or Flanders.  A great number of our men and women and children, Volunteers and civilians confounded alike, are dead, and some fifty thousand men who have been moved with military equipment to our land are now being removed therefrom.  The English nation has been disorganised no more than as they were affected by the transport of these men and material.  That is what happened, and it is all that happened.

How it happened is another matter, and one which, perhaps, will not be made clear for years.  All we know in Dublin is that our city burst into a kind of spontaneous war; that we lived through it during one singular week, and that it faded away and disappeared almost as swiftly as it had come.  The men who knew about it are, with two exceptions, dead, and these two exceptions are in gaol, and likely to remain there long enough. (Since writing one of these men has been shot.)