Ireland suffered under a genuine grievance. The taxation was unjust; there were other injustices. But if a truce could be called and an offer made which put right what had before been wrong, the dream of a Republic would pass away as a man’s dream passes away in the morning. Let the tension be slackened and life find its true values again, and all the shouts left in the throats of the true Republicans would not trouble the nation again. The effort had been used up, and the gods do not give such passion twice in a generation. They are chary of their gifts. Thinking this, I waited on the bridge, wondering how long would go by before some one in the crowd fired at the soldiers, whereupon the soldiers would return the compliment, and there would follow a stampede, and I would be offered the choice of being shot to death or crushed to death. But nobody drew a gun on this occasion, though another time, very soon afterwards, I was on the same spot, and somebody in the crowd threw a bomb or fired a shot, somebody who was well down a side street a moment afterwards, and the soldiers fired into the brown as I expected, and a woman was killed. But the dove of peace, which had fluttered into sight for a day or two before Christmas, had fled away, and was not yet to be seen back again, and during these first weeks of the new year it became evident that spirit was to descend yet farther into matter. I take the following quotations haphazard from issues of the _Irish Bulletin_ (the Republican organ) of that date. Such remedies as these were tried to cope with the situation. “On Saturday night, January 1st, Auxiliary Police raided a dance hall in Lisduff, co. Leitrim. The dance was interrupted, and the dancers questioned and searched. They were then compelled to sing ‘God save the King’ and denounce President De Valera, after which they were ordered out of the dance hall, shots being fired after them.” “A Proclamation has been issued by Major-General Strickland, English Military Governor in Cork, prohibiting the use of motor-cars, motor-cycles, and pedal cycles between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m. in the Martial Law area, which now extends over one-third of Ireland. This order comes into force on the 20th inst.” “On the afternoon of Friday, January 14th, 1921, Auxiliary Police arrested So-and-so. All the men were prominent merchants in the town.... The men were taken to the local barracks and were then formed into a procession and compelled to march through the town carrying Union Jacks and trailing the Republican flag in the dust. An itinerant musician was compelled to head the procession playing a banjo. At the rear of the procession a large party of Black-and-Tan Constabulary drove in a motor lorry cheering and shouting. After they had marched through the town the merchants were forced to kneel down in the public street and kiss the Union Jack, whilst the Constabulary burned the Republican flag.”