however, that no needed fighters would be killed, the girls had asked that
they should be first to meet the president. Then, when the machine guns
commenced, "only girls" would fall.

Into College Green a brute of a tank had cruised. The man in charge was
inviting people to have a look. Inside there were red-lipped munition
boxes, provender cases, and through the skewer-sized sight-holes next the
jutting guns, there were glimpses of shoppers emerging from Grafton street
into the Green. Over the city, against the silver-rimmed, Irish gray
clouds, aeroplanes--there were sixteen in one formation--buzzed
insistently. Between the little stone columns of the roof railing of
Trinity College, machine guns poked out their cold snouts.

"Smoke bombs were dropped over Mount street bridge today," said Harry
Boland with a shrug of his shoulders when I arrived at Sinn Fein
headquarters to ask if the reception would still be held. "What can we do
against a force like theirs?"

But there was a strained feeling at headquarters as if the decision had
been made after a hard fight. Alderman Thomas Kelly, one of the oldest of
the Sinn Feiners, told me that he had backed DeValera in his refusal to
countenance a needless loss of life, and that it was only after a good
struggle that their point had won.

"DeValera's just beyond the town," whispered Harry Boland to me when he
decided that we would leave to see the president at seven--the hour the
executive was due to appear at the bridge. "They're searching all the cars
that cross the canal bridges. If there is any trouble as we pass just say
that you are an American citizen--that'd get you through anywhere."