1916 (56 page)

It is stated, on good authority, that the Volunteers seized two machine guns and defeated the military at Summerhill last evening.

Rang up the Lord Lieutenant’s Secretary to request that priests would be placed on the same footing as medical practitioners who were allowed out between the forbidden hours of 7.30pm and 5am. (Permission never came.)

After 4pm machine-­gun firing was particularly severe for some time. There was some cannonading.

A second fire has broken out at Hugh, Moore and Alexander, and another at Linenhall Barracks.

Cannonading was resumed at 5.10pm. It is stated to be the shelling of houses in O’Connell Street and that the military have set on fire the DBC, to burn out the Volunteers. There is fierce sniping and machine­gun fire.

Many more bullets flew about the house. Another struck the house piercing the east window of the billiard room (now the Archbishop’s study) and deflected sharply to the left against an open bookcase, smashing the woodwork. I found the bullet. In consequence, we arranged for the Archbishop to sleep on the north side and barricaded the windows with mattresses. Later, however, in the evening shots were fired along Drumcondra Road from Tolka Bridge towards the Canal. Altogether we are very anxious. We ourselves (that is, the secretaries) established ourselves in the lower corridor in the centre of the house.

The city fires are extending and look most alarming at darkness. O’Connell Street is burned from Abbey Street to Eden Quay, including the DBC, etc. A third centre of fire, though small, is the Provincial Hotel, opposite the Four Courts – and houses in Bridgefoot Street.

Birrell returned to the Castle last night or this morning.

Martial law was proclaimed yesterday. Nevertheless, people crowded the streets after 7.30pm. The military had to drive them indoors by discharging rifle shots over their heads. The streets are without light. There is much sniping here at times.
Lusk and Donabate Volunteers who had arms – about sixty – marched and joined the Swords Volunteers yesterday. They occupied the three Post Offices and Police Barracks, got some twelve rifles and marched to Garristown. All Lusk is wild with excitement and, if they had arms, all would rise. (One of the priests there brought this report.)

That concludes the diary entries of Thursday, the 27th April.

Friday, 28th April, 1916

The following are the entries under Friday, the 28th April 19l6:

The situation is much the same as yesterday except that the streets are more deserted and more dangerous.

The Volunteers still occupy all their posts of yesterday. They are still apparently in the South Dublin Union and also in Marrowbone Lane Distillery. They occupy Carton’s Lane in the North City Markets district. Volunteer snipers occupy Merrion Square houses
.
(Probably this information was obtained from Dr Cox who telephoned during the day, but could not get over.)

The fires are still burning. Clery’s is now on fire.

Many people have taken refuge in the Pro­Cathedral. People entering or leaving are shot at by the military. Under these circumstances, the administrator applied to the military that they should occupy it. This they did, in great force, later in the day. They occupy both Church and Presbytery, with all the passages, rooms and roofs.
(The military had already been in possession of Tyrone House, the Model Schools.) T
hey also stated that they might have to send there the guests in the Hammam and Gresham Hotels.

The military also occupy St Catherine’s Protestant Church.

Father Edward Byrne
(later Archbishop)
and Father Joe MacArdle are in Jervis Street Hospital (on duty). It was thought better to leave them there, on account of the danger passing through the streets. Father John Flanagan is in the GPO.

Whole districts are without provisions – milk, butter, bread or meat. Only for flour, many would be very badly off. Kennedy’s bakeries supply the area.

A sniper close at hand in Fitzroy Avenue or at the railway kept up most persistent sniping from noon to night. He did make things hum
.
(It was when taking aim at him that the bullets hit the Archbishop’s house. I forget who he was. This man kept up sniping for long after the surrenders – to the best of my recollection, until Tuesday forenoon. The houses in Fitzroy Avenue were searched for him several times but be ran about from roof to roof and was not discovered. I heard afterwards who he was. He lived in Fitzroy Avenue.)

My diary then lists all the priests who telephoned or called and then continues:

The military occupy the corner of the North Circular Road and Summerhill, the top of North Richmond Street
(or Schools),
the top of Russell Street, the Malt House of Portland Street. They have barricaded the bottom of ei> (North) Summer Street. They have a machine gun in Fanning’s
(corner North Circular Road and Jones’ Road).

Telegraphic communication is established with Dublin, but communications with the provinces go through London.

The military shot an incendiary
(bomb)
into the GPO at
[word missing]
o’clock and set it ablaze.

The sight at night was most impressive. Firing had almost ceased and everything was deadly quiet and black, except the fires in O’Connell Street and Linenhall Barracks. An occasional shot from our neighbouring sniper
(Fitzroy avenue)
alone disturbed the quietness of a lovely, calm, starry night.

Saturday, 29th April 1916

The following is a transcript (practically verbatim) from my diary:
Saturday, April 29th, 1916. There seems to be no change overnight. We hear the usual sniping and machine­gun fire. There is, however, great distress through scarcity of food.

I paid a visit home – North Circular Road – from 10–12.

While I was out, the military (Major Price) rang up about eleven o’clock to say that the Government were about to issue a proclamation, described to me as offering terms of surrender to the Volunteers and asking whether the Archbishop would ask the clergy to convey this to the Volunteers. The Archbishop replied that it was not necessary for him to ask them. He was sure they would do it themselves if asked by the military
.
(My recollection to-day is that this, or some similar military telephonic message, made allusion to the danger that churches and civilian property would run if the Volunteers would not lay down arms. I have some doubt as to the objective accuracy of this telephone message. I was not in the house at the time.)

The military are using an armoured motor­car to take houses in the Capel Street area. They charge into the street, back the car into a shop, smashing everything in. The military get out of the back of the car and storm floor by floor. In this way, they have captured sections of streets and pushed in their barricades.

At 4 o’clock I was in the Secretaries’ Study when the telephone bell, which had seldom sounded those days, suddenly rang and a girl’s voice abruptly told me: ‘The Sinn Féiners have surrendered’ – and clapped down the telephone immediately and could not be recalled. (I took it that she was an employee in the telephone office, or the Castle, and was anxious that the Archbishop should know as quickly as possible and that she did it without authorisation. I did my best to re­call her but I could not.) I at once informed the Archbishop and it was arranged that I would go down town to the Pro­Cathedral for information and with instructions.

I walked down by Mountjoy Square and North Great George’s Street. There were great numbers in the hall­ways, in an atmosphere of expectancy. The cessation of gun­fire for some hours made people speculate in this area whether the fighting was coming to an end, or had already come to an end, and whether the Volunteers had surrendered. But nobody could obtain news and each sought information from his neighbour.

At the Pro­Cathedral I found them similarly without definite news. The surrender was only an unconfirmed rumour. Father Bowden, Administrator, was in the Marlborough Street Schools, finding food and bedding for refugees. I left the Archbishop’s directions concerning Sunday, namely, that it was to be announced that there was no obligation to hear mass on next day, Sunday, and no bells were to be rung.

The Archbishop was anxious concerning Father John Flanagan, as some said he had been killed, others that he had probably found his way from the GPO to Jervis Street Hospital, where we knew Father Edward Byrne (the late Archbishop) and Father McArdle were stationed, and where rumours said Father Flanagan also was to be found.

Even then I was under the mistaken impression that the Volunteers had been disarmed and had left the GPO area. It was known by this time that the GPO was burned out and that the Volunteers had fallen back towards Henry Street or Jervis Street. (We had heard that the place was on fire and the roof had fallen in and, of course, we speculated on all the possibilities.) I have a vague recollection that we had already been told that the Volunteers were turning the whole area around there into a barricaded area in an attempt to keep­up communications with the Four Courts and Church Street or join the garrisons there.

I left by Cathedral Street, where a dead civilian lay in the doorway of the (then) DUT Co. parcel department. Emerging into O’Connell Street, I witnessed an indescribable sight. There was not a soul but myself in the whole street. The GPO was a mere shell. The left­hand side (i.e. east) of Lower O’Connell Street was a smoking ruin. The right­hand side was little better. Clery’s was burned out and the DBC also was a shell. The smell of burning materials pervaded everywhere. Smoke hung low about.
(The dead Lancer’s horse lay killed at the foot of Nelson’s Pillar, as I had seen it on Monday.)
I aimed to go to Jervis St. through Henry St. Moving across, my every foot­step crunched broken glass. The silence was deadly and already I was beginning to have misgivings. Before I was half­way across I saw that Henry Street was blocked, and so I turned towards the Rotunda where, by this time, I saw a group of military at the foot of the Parnell Monument. With much uneasiness, I ventured past the tramway office, on the right hand side, i.e., east, the Hammam and Gresham Hotels. This side of the street is uninjured. Gill’s (west) side is considerably injured by fire, shelling and rifle fire, especially the YMCA. People crowded the doorways and windows of the hotels and called out to me for news. It was then that I began to realise that my notion of the surrender was incorrect, for these people facing O’Connell St. knew nothing about it. When I mentioned the surrender, they came out into the street but were sharply ordered in by the military. At the Gresham Hotel I met Mr D’Arcy of ?, Upper O’Connell Street, who was full of fantastic slanders of the Volunteers
.
(I cannot remember the number of the house where he lived. Mr D’Arcy had lodgings in a flat in a house very near John Burke’s {solicitor} office. He was one of the D’Arcys, the brewery people. He was in the Gresham. He had been driven out of his house and got rooms in the Gresham Hotel.) The military again peremptorily ordered all indoors and I continued towards the Rotunda.

At the Parnell Monument I met Colonel Portal, Commanding Officer, to whom
I explained who I was and my anxiety to reach Jervis Street Hospital. He at once informed me of the surrender, showed me six copies of the order of surrender, signed by Pearse, and asked me to make it known. I asked him for a copy but, as he had only six, he could not give me one. He warned me that I would need a pass and kindly made out one from his note­book. It must have been the first military pass issued. I had no further conversation with him and still I did not know the real position and thought that the surrender and disarmament had already taken place
(elsewhere).
Not many military were to be seen in the immediate neighbourhood of the Parnell Monument. But as I passed down Parnell Street, I saw every street, alley and passage barricaded, with soldiers behind sandbags, and rifles pointed toward the smoking ruins in Moore Street and Henry Street. I was told to slip along these barricades quickly, and then, for the first time, I realised that the disarmament had not yet taken place. But there was no superior officer from whom I could obtain news or information. I continued on to Jervis Street amidst the alarmed warnings and prayers of the people in the doorways.

At Jervis St. Hospital I met the three priests, but was advised not to venture back to Drumcondra. By this time, I saw plainly I could do nothing else and managed to send a telephone message to Archbishop’s House
(from the hospital).

That ends my direct contacts with the Rising of Easter Week.

I. 'J
UST WAR' THEORY

It is reported that in the first few days of the 1916 Easter Rising, when the heavy fighting had not yet got under way, Pádraig Pearse and Joseph Plunkett discussed the morality of resorting to arms.
¹
Given that they had already committed themselves beyond the point of no return, such discussion appears odd. (It probably appeared more than odd to Clarke and Connolly.) No doubt they had discussed it before, and in this instance it was likely to be an attempt to reassure themselves of the moral rectitude of the Rising.

Since discussion of the morality of the insurrection often focuses on the resort to force, let’s look briefly at how the just war theory might be applied to it.