when danger to themselves is imminent, and it seems right that they
should laugh when the danger only threatens others.

It is rumoured this morning that Sackville Street has been burned out
and levelled to the ground. It is said that the end is in sight; and, it
is said, that matters are, if anything rather worse than better. That
the Volunteers have sallied from some of their strongholds and
entrenched themselves, and that in one place alone (the South Lotts)
they have seven machine guns. That when the houses which they held
became untenable they rushed out and seized other houses, and that,
pursuing these tactics, there seemed no reason to believe that the
Insurrection would ever come to an end. That the streets are filled with
Volunteers in plain clothes, but having revolvers in their pockets. That
the streets are filled with soldiers equally revolvered and plain
clothed, and that the least one says on any subject the less one would
have to answer for.

The feeling that I tapped was definitely Anti-Volunteer, but the number
of people who would speak was few, and one regarded the noncommital
folk who were so smiling and polite, and so prepared to talk, with much
curiosity, seeking to read in their eyes, in their bearing, even in the
cut of their clothes what might be the secret movements and cogitations
of their minds.

I received the impression that numbers of them did not care a rap what
way it went; and that others had ceased to be mental creatures and were
merely machines for registering the sensations of the time.

None of these people were prepared for Insurrection. The thing had been
sprung on them so suddenly that they were unable to take sides, and