They were not merely surprised; they were frightened. The superstitious element in their fear was great, too. It had always been so. When Kitchener was drowned off the Irish coast, a man I know, an Irishman, spoke of it to an English soldier. "Yes; you and your damned rosaries!" retorted the soldier, looking frightened even as he said it. The British seem to feel we are in league with unearthly powers against which they have no protection. On Easter Monday they believed that behind this sudden decision, as it appeared to them, something dark and sinister was lurking. How else would we dare to revolt against the British Empire? It was as if our men were not flesh and blood, but spirits summoned up by their own bad conscience to take vengeance for many centuries of misrule. It must have been some such feeling that accounted for the way they lost, at the very outset, all their usual military calm and ruthlessness. We recognized this feeling, and it made our men stronger in spirit. We were convinced of the justice of our cause, convinced that even dying was a small matter compared with the privilege we now shared of fighting for that cause. Besides, there was no traitor in our ranks. No one had whispered a word of our plans to the British authorities. That is one reason why our memory of Easter Week has in it something finer than the memory of any other rising in the past. You must bear in mind that the temptation to betray the rising must have been just as strong, that it had in it just as much guarantee of security for the future, as heretofore. Yet no one yielded to this temptation. Even more amazing was the fact that the authorities had not paid any heed to those utterances which for months past had been highly seditious. For instance, here is what Padraic Pearse stated openly in one of his articles: I am ready. For years I have waited and prayed for this day. We have the most glorious opportunity that has ever presented itself of really asserting ourselves. Such an opportunity will never come again. We have Ireland's liberty in our hands. Or are we content to remain as slaves and idly watch the final extermination of the Gael?