The women were less guarded, or, perhaps, knew they had less to fear.
Most of the female opinion I heard was not alone unfavourable but
actively and viciously hostile to the rising. This was noticeable among
the best dressed class of our population; the worst dressed, indeed the
female dregs of Dublin life, expressed a like antagonism, and almost in
similar language. The view expressed was--

"I hope every man of them will be shot."

And--

"They ought to be all shot."

Shooting, indeed, was proceeding everywhere. During daylight, at least,
the sound is not sinister nor depressing, and the thought that perhaps a
life had exploded with that crack is not depressing either.

In the last two years of world-war our ideas on death have undergone a
change. It is not now the furtive thing that crawled into your bed and
which you fought with pill-boxes and medicine bottles. It has become
again a rider of the wind whom you may go coursing with through the
fields and open places. All the morbidity is gone, and the sickness, and
what remains to Death is now health and excitement. So Dublin laughed at
the noise of its own bombardment, and made no moan about its dead--in
the sunlight. Afterwards--in the rooms, when the night fell, and instead
of silence that mechanical barking of the maxims and the whistle and
screams of the rifles, the solemn roar of the heavier guns, and the red
glare covering the sky. It is possible that in the night Dublin did not
laugh, and that she was gay in the sunlight for no other reason than
that the night was past.