The other singularity of the rising is the amazing silence in which it was fought.  Nothing spoke but the guns; and the Volunteers on the one side and the soldiers on the other potted each other and died in whispers; it might have been said that both sides feared the Germans would hear them and take advantage of their preoccupation.

There is a third reason given for the rebellion, and it also is divorced from foreign plots.  It is said, and the belief in Dublin was widespread, that the Government intended to raid the Volunteers and seize their arms.  One remembers to-day the paper which Alderman Kelly read to the Dublin Corporation, and which purported to be State Instructions that the Military and Police should raid the Volunteers, and seize their arms and leaders.  The Volunteers had sworn they would not permit their arms to be taken from them.  A list of the places to be raided was given, and the news created something of a sensation in Ireland when it was published that evening.  The Press, by instruction apparently, repudiated this document, but the Volunteers, with most of the public, believed it to be true, and it is more than likely that the rebellion took place in order to forestall the Government.

This is also an explanation of the rebellion, and is just as good a one as any other.  It is the explanation which I believe to be the true one.

All the talk of German invasion and the landing of German troops in Ireland is so much nonsense in view of the fact that England is master of the seas, and that from a week before the war down to this date she has been the undisputed monarch of those ridges.  During this war there will be no landing of troops in either England or Ireland unless Germany in the meantime can solve the problem of submarine transport.  It is a problem which will be solved some day, for every problem can be solved, but it will hardly be during the progress of this war.  The men at the head of the Volunteers were not geniuses, neither were they fools, and the difficulty of acquiring military aid from Germany must have seemed as insurmountable to them as it does to the Germans themselves.  They rose because they felt that they had to do so, or be driven like sheep into the nearest police barracks, and be laughed at by the whole of Ireland as cowards and braggarts.

It would be interesting to know why, on the eve of the insurrection, Professor MacNeill resigned the presidency of the Volunteers.  The story of treachery which was heard in the streets is not the true one, for men of his type are not traitors, and this statement may be dismissed without further comment or notice.  One is left to imagine what can have happened during the conference which is said to have preceded the rising, and which ended with the resignation of Professor MacNeill.