Enlistment had not been growing in popularity in Ireland for some years before the war. In 1908, _Sinn Fein_ had pointed out with satisfaction that the army returns showed that the number of Irishmen in the regular army had then fallen to the lowest point upon record. The Boer War and the anti-recruiting propaganda in Ireland had not been without their effect upon Irish feeling and the real position and work of the army in Ireland had been closely scrutinized. "The Curragh Mutiny" had provoked some very pointed comments upon the spirit which really animated the army in Ireland: it came to be looked upon as the citadel and symbol of all the forces that opposed the claims of Ireland. "We all know in our hearts," said Roger Casement and Eoin MacNeill in a manifesto published in April, 1914, in the _Irish Volunteer_, "that the 'Union' means the military occupation of Ireland as a conquered country: that the real headquarters of Irish government on the Unionist principle is the Curragh Camp to which the offices of Dublin Castle are only a sort of vermiform appendix." And the functions performed by the army in Ireland would certainly have seemed strange to anyone who felt any attachment to the views generally accepted in England as to the relation of the army to the civil power. In the General Orders for the guidance of the troops affording aid to the Civil Power in Ireland, issued in 1891, the following paragraph is to be found: "All officers in command of corps or detachments are to transmit to the Deputy Adjutant General an immediate report of any outrages, large meetings held or expected to be held for political or other purposes, or occurrences that may take place in the neighbourhood of their posts connected with the state of the country, whether they have or have not been called upon to afford assistance to the civil power." The functions of an army acting upon instructions like these are hardly to be distinguished from those of an army of occupation, and Nationalist Ireland was well aware of the efficiency with which these functions were performed. To make enlistment popular in Ireland, even in a moment of enthusiasm, was thus a work requiring a certain amount of tact and discretion.