"I am an Irishman, and (pointing to the shells that were bursting
through the windows in front of us) I hate to see that being done to
other Irishmen."

He had come from some part of the country to spend the Easter Holidays
in Dublin, and was unable to leave town again.

The labouring man--he was about fifty-six years of age--spoke very
quietly and collectedly about the insurrection. He was a type with whom
I had come very little in contact, and I was surprised to find how
simple and good his speech was, and how calm his ideas. He thought
labour was in this movement to a greater extent than was imagined. I
mentioned that Liberty Hall had been blown up, and that the garrison had
either surrendered or been killed. He replied that a gunboat had that
morning come up the river and had blown Liberty Hall into smash, but, he
added, there were no men in it. All the Labour Volunteers had marched
with Connolly into the Post Office.

He said the Labour Volunteers might possibly number about one thousand
men, but that it would be quite safe to say eight hundred, and he held
that the Labour Volunteers, or the Citizens' Army, as they called
themselves, had always been careful not to reveal their numbers. They
had always announced that they possessed about two hundred and fifty
men, and had never paraded any more than that number at any one time.
Workingmen, he continued, knew that the men who marched were always
different men. The police knew it, too, but they thought that the
Citizens Army was the _most deserted-from force_ in the world.

The men, however, were not deserters--you don't, he said, desert a man