_Eire_ did not so much make, as voice, the opinions of a considerable section of Irish Nationalist opinion. The newspapers were scanned eagerly every morning all over Ireland for tidings of the Irish regiments. It was known that they were engaged, that they were outnumbered, that they would fight like lions ("the Gaels went out to battle but they always fell"): a disquieting and ominous silence reigned as to their fate. It was assumed that the news was bad and that it was being kept back: it began to be asserted that they were being put upon forlorn hopes to spare the more valued English regiments: and even those who did not credit the suspicion felt uneasy when it was expressed. It may have been necessary to refrain from telling the whole truth in official reports, but every course has its disadvantages and, so far as Ireland was concerned, this had the result of arousing suspicion and distrust. And to the question "Why, if these men can fight and die for the freedom of others, are they not considered worthy of the freedom they desire for themselves?" the answers did not carry conviction. The official "War News" printed in the Irish papers was read with detachment and reserve; stories of German atrocities were received with unimpressionable scepticism. This was not due to any pro-German bias, or to any Sinn Fein propaganda. Peasants in remote villages who never saw any paper but an odd copy of the _Freeman's Journal_ or the _Irish Daily Independent_, and who were Redmondites to a man, discussed these matters with a completely open mind, and with (to those who did not know them) surprising acumen. People accustomed for years to read that their county or their province, in which some unpopular grazier had been boycotted, was "seething with outrage and disorder," to be told that a district in which there was known not to be as much crime in a year as there was in an English district of the same size every month was "in a state bordering on almost complete lawlessness," were not moved when the Germans were charged on the same authority with crimes against civilization. The word of "our English correspondent" was simply "not evidence" against anybody. This invincible scepticism, born of experience, was quite wrongly interpreted as being the result of "pro-German" sympathies when it proved an unexpected obstacle to the recruiting campaign.