This was certainly a thing that struck me, and I realized at once that the movement was at that time a dismal failure as far as the vast majority of Nationalist Ireland was concerned. There was practically no response whatever from the people: it seemed the very antithesis of the emancipation of a race as we see it, say, in the capture of the Bastille in the French Revolution. They looked on partly with amazement, partly with curiosity--waiting for something dramatic to happen. The point struck me with particular pathos--there they were posing as the saviours of their country, and yet there they were already doomed before they had even struck a single blow--and doomed by the verdict of their own countrymen. As I was making the remark to one of the men in the hotel, a boy with a handful of sheets issued from the Post Office--they were the proclamation of the new Republic of Ireland. Instead of eagerly scanning the sheets and picking out the watchwords of the new liberty, or glowing with enthusiastic admiration at the phrases or sentiments, most of the crowd "bought a couple as a souvenir"--some with the cute business instinct "that they'd be worth a fiver each some day, when the beggars were hanged." I give another pathetic story told to me, though I cannot vouch for it. It was that young Plunkett was deputed to go to the base of Nelson's Pillar and there read out the new charter of liberty to the emancipated citizens. He read it with deep emotion to a pack of squabbling women and children--and he had hardly half finished the document when suddenly there was a crash, followed by the sound of breaking glass. At once the crowd turned round and looked in the direction whence it proceeded, and one old woman, half sodden with drink, exclaimed with delight, "Hooroosh!--they're raiding Noblet's toffee-shop." Whereupon the newly emancipated slaves of a foreign tyranny rushed to partake in the orgy of sweetmeats which came tumbling out into the street. It was to me the saddest picture of the whole revolution, and even if not true, was certainly typical of much of the pathos which crowned this mixture of humour and tragedy. The document in question, however, was by no means undignified, taken as an explanation of the ideals that animated the rebels, but it was simply ridiculous when judged by the hard common-sense standards of stern reality, though it was probably never meant for anything more than a rhetorical protest in the name of the fast-ebbing sense of Nationality. This Utopian outburst perhaps speaks best for itself, and I quote it in full:-- POBLACHT NA H-EIREANN. THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT OF THE IRISH REPUBLIC TO THE PEOPLE OF IRELAND.