to assist in suppressing the rising.  Except for a serious encounter with a police force in county Dublin, the fighting was confined to the capital.  It terminated by the unconditional surrender of the rebels on the Saturday.  The struggle was prolonged by the total lack of artillery in the early stages.  Riflemen established in houses could not be dislodged by direct assault of infantry without very heavy casualties to the attacking force.

The purpose of this book is to show Redmond’s connection with this event and the succeeding developments from it.  He failed to foresee the event; he failed to direct its developments into the course he desired.  How far he is to be held responsible, or blameworthy, for these failures, readers may be assisted to decide.

From the beginning of 1916 onwards the Irish Government was warned of danger.  One of its members—­the Attorney-General, Sir James Campbell—­advocated the seizure of arms from men parading with what were evidently stolen service rifles or bayonets.  But the Chief Secretary refused to take any action which could be described as an attempt to suppress or disarm the Irish Volunteers until there was definite evidence of actual association with the enemy.

Proof of sympathy was not difficult to obtain, and the propaganda against recruiting had now reached the point of attempts to break up recruiting meetings.  Still, Mr. Birrell was in a difficulty.  He had a logical mind, and he knew what had been permitted to Ulster.  The fact that the Attorney-General himself had been a main adviser of the Provisional Government did not make it easier to follow his advice to disarm men who professed disaffection to the existing authority.  Mr. Birrell knew that if he took such action he could be attacked in the official Nationalist Press for having one law in Ulster and another in the South.  Further, Redmond would certainly not have disavowed, and might even have endorsed, such a line of criticism.  The reason was that Redmond, as he had never believed in the reality of the Ulster danger, so now did not believe in this one.

Later, when Mr. Birrell resigned his post after the insurrection was suppressed, Redmond chivalrously took on himself a part of the responsibility.  “I feel,” he said, “that I have incurred some share of the blame which he has laid at his own door, because I entirely agreed with his view that the danger of an outbreak of the kind was not a real one, and in my conversations with him I have expressed that view, and for all I know that may have influenced him in his conduct and his management of Irish affairs.”  A later debate—­on July 31st—­showed that his strong personal feeling for Mr. Birrell had moved him rather to overstate than to belittle his advisory responsibility.  Dublin Castle had never consulted him as to policy.  Conferences had taken place with the Under-Secretary, Sir Matthew Nathan, but these were concerned with considering and framing the machinery to be created for bringing the Home Rule Act into operation, whenever the time came.