The recognised policy of the I.R.A. was to harass the Government forces continuously; orders were issued to that effect, and in cases of isolated barracks it was the practice to fire occasional shots at the windows night after night with the idea of keeping the inmates on the qui vive for an attack, which was never to take place. Occasionally, if sufficient volunteers were in the neighbourhood, a barracks would be attacked, the attackers bringing with them the materials for setting the place on fire, and so forcing the garrison to capitulate. When it is borne in mind that the attackers frequently arrived in force, it is strange they met so seldom with success; but the hit and run policy must have been on the whole demoralising to the volunteers. I do not think, when their number and equipment are taken into account, any other policy could have been adopted, nor do I wish to suggest that the volunteers had a lesser share of courage than other men. They are part of the British nation, and many fine soldiers have come from Ireland. But when a soldier goes to battle in the belief that in nine chances out of ten he will come away without a scratch, in fact that all he will be asked to do will be to fire one or two shots and then away, he gets that sense of safety before all which is likely to be fatal to his daring. The phantom enemy continued to fail to materialise; but little by little Government agents, swimming up and down in the sea of Sinn Fein, found out who were the responsible Republican leaders in their districts, captured documents gave further evidence, and the police came to know in time whether the butcher standing politely behind his counter was always a butcher; whether the baker gave up kneading bread on occasion and produced a gun from under the floor, and so on. They came to know whether the grocer held meetings at the back of his shop after the shutters were up. Then one day some constable--in most cases a marked man who had been shifted from another part of the country--strolling through the village to buy a stick of tobacco, would get fired on by half a dozen men round a corner. The chances were the assassins belonged to another district, as it was a policy to send volunteers to work in a district where they were not known. The men who fired the shots were gone when the police arrived to their murdered comrade; but the butcher, the baker, and the grocer were behind their counters like worthy tradesmen. These very men, guiltless of this crime, had possibly done similar work in another neighbourhood; it was known they were members of the detested phantom army. The police, filled with hate, fear, and worn out with weeks of vigil, turned upon these people and their shops for their just revenge. Up went the town. These were the circumstances which brought about the reprisals. CHAPTER VIII AUTUMN WEARS OUT