It was in August, 1917, that our little handful of men made its first public parade. By that time the men who had been deported after the Easter Week Insurrection had been released, and all over the country were beginning to do what we had been doing on our own account for nearly a year. In the political arena two bye-elections which had occurred in Roscommon and Longford, resulted in a triumph for candidates standing for the Republican cause. A few months later still Eamon de Valera, on his release from Lewes Jail, had been invited to contest a Parliamentary vacancy in East Clare. Standing for a Republic, and for declining to attend England’s Parliament, he was elected by a huge majority. Shortly after his election he addressed an enormous meeting in Tipperary town, and we, in the dark green uniforms of the Irish Volunteers, acted as a bodyguard of the man who was shortly afterwards elected President of the Irish Republic. Tipperary was then occupied by a garrison of over one thousand British soldiers, and as our meeting was held almost under the shadow of their barracks we did not carry rifles. Instead we carried hurleys. Now, we were thus, to the amazement of all peaceful people, committing a treble act of defiance against England. In the first place, it was a crime to march in military formation; secondly, it was an even more serious offence to wear uniform; and thirdly, it was violating a special proclamation just issued against the carrying of hurleys. That proclamation came about in this way. A meeting was being held in Beresford Place, Dublin, one Sunday afternoon to protest against the treatment of Irish prisoners detained by England. The meeting was being addressed by Count Plunkett and Cathal Brugha, when Inspector Mills, of the Dublin Metropolitan Police, with some of his men attempted to prevent the holding of this peaceful meeting of citizens. The meeting included many young men going to or returning from a game of hurling—Ireland’s national pastime. In the melee, which followed the attempt to break up the meeting and to arrest the speakers, the Inspector was struck with a hurley, and received injuries from which he died. Thereupon, Sir Bryan Mahon, then Commander-in-Chief of the British troops in Ireland, issued a proclamation making it illegal to carry hurleys in public. To realise the absurdity of this proclamation one has only to imagine a civilised Government declaring it illegal to carry a walking-stick. The result was what anybody knowing Ireland might expect—hurleys for a time were carried in places where their use was scarcely known, and the British Government became a laughing-stock.