As the war developed we were closely watched by the police. We were known as “pro-Germans.” The majority of the people, carried away by the campaign of lies and calumny in the Press, were in favour of England as against Germany in the war. The aristocracy and the wealthiest merchants and farmers generally supported the movements that were started to provide comforts for the British soldiers in the trenches. But we of the Irish Volunteers—henceforth in using that term I must be understood to mean those who declined to take England’s side in the war—stood aloof. It was then that I came into disfavour with the police for my refusal to support their funds for providing comforts for soldiers. I was an employee of the Great Southern and Western Railway, and I have no doubt that they acquainted my superiors with what they regarded as my disloyal tendencies. It is necessary to explain the nature of this police force. The Royal Irish Constabulary—a body that has now passed into history—was not a police force in the sense understood in other countries. It was a semi-military force, trained to the use of arms, and provided with carbines and rifles. As crime in the ordinary sense was practically unknown in Ireland, the main duty of these men was to spy upon Volunteers and others working for an Independent Ireland. They were known to report even sermons delivered by Irish priests. In all there were then about ten thousand of these police in the country, scattered in small garrisons of two to ten or twenty men, according to the size of the village or town in which they were located. Sprung as they were for the most part from Irish Nationalist families, they were the brain of England’s garrison in Ireland; for they knew the people and they got the information without which England’s 40,000 troops—ignorant alike of the country, its people and its history—would have been of little use. I now resume my narrative. From the outbreak of the Great War I still continued my daily work, and took no more active part than any ordinary private in the local company of the Irish Volunteers. We met and drilled a few times a week, and tried to pick up a rifle or a revolver now and again; for the Volunteers generally had very few arms at that time. Thus we continued our routine through 1915, and up to April, 1916. With the Insurrection of 1916 I do not propose to deal here, except to say that owing to the confusion of orders and counter-orders the men of Tipperary got no chance of having their mettle tested. I must, however, remark upon a coincidence in connection with our plans. Part of the duty of the Volunteers of my district was to have been the destroying of an important line of railway communications. For that purpose we were to have seized a quantity of gelignite, then stored by the County Council for blasting purposes in a neighbouring quarry. That quarry was Soloheadbeg, where three years later my comrades and I received our baptism of fire.