THE INSURRECTION IS OVER.


The Insurrection is over, and it is worth asking what has happened, how
it has happened, and why it happened?

The first question is easily answered. The finest part of our city has
been blown to smithereens, and burned into ashes. Soldiers amongst us
who have served abroad say that the ruin of this quarter is more
complete than any thing they have seen at Ypres, than anything they have
seen anywhere in France or Flanders. A great number of our men and women
and children, Volunteers and civilians confounded alike, are dead, and
some fifty thousand men who have been moved with military equipment to
our land are now being removed therefrom. The English nation has been
disorganised no more than as they were affected by the transport of
these men and material. That is what happened, and it is all that
happened.

How it happened is another matter, and one which, perhaps, will not be
made clear for years. All we know in Dublin is that our city burst into
a kind of spontaneous war; that we lived through it during one singular
week, and that it faded away and disappeared almost as swiftly as it had
come. The men who knew about it are, with two exceptions, dead, and
these two exceptions are in gaol, and likely to remain there long
enough. (Since writing one of these men has been shot.)

Why it happened is a question that may be answered more particularly. It
happened because the leader of the Irish Party misrepresented his people
in the English House of Parliament. On the day of the declaration of war