All day long and all around there was a perfect hail of bullets from the snipers, some going right through the hospital grounds from Boland's bakery, which, sandbagged and loopholed, was filled with Sinn Feiners. It was a terrible fight, for of course it was next to impossible for the soldiers to distinguish them, being all in civilian clothes so that they just had to doff their bandoliers and they could go about from house to house in safety. Sometimes they did this purposely, having arms in several places. Hence the order had to go out that all civilians would have to stay indoors, and after that all suspicious characters were shot at, with the terrible result that innocent civilians were killed on all sides. Accordingly, while on our way to pick up a body I went with one of the stretcher-bearers and a priest and a parson to warn them to keep indoors. One poor fellow we brought in, shot through the breast, was apparently a civilian, but on examination we found on him a curious document, undoubtedly proving him a Sinn Feiner. The story of this document, which was perhaps the final decisive factor that precipitated the rising, is perhaps best told in the words of the Royal Commission:-- On the 19th of April a special meeting of the Dublin Corporation was held at the Mansion House to discuss the police rate. Alderman Thomas Kelly, in the course of a speech attacking Mr. Justice Kenny (who had alluded at the opening of his Commission to the state of disorder in Dublin and had urged military action), made a statement to the effect that he had received that morning from the editor of _New Ireland_ a circular which he would read. It was from a man named Little, _New Ireland_ Office, 13, Fleet Street, Dublin, April 16, 1916, and ran:--