"Easy now, Captain," said my father, "remember they are only volunteers." Captain White turned like a flash. "Yes," he said. "And aren't they great?" {5} And he forgot his rage in his admiration of the men of a few weeks' training. He gave an order, the men marched past and at a given place they received broom handles with which they practiced rifle drill. After rifle drill came the line up for the march home. We waited till the last row was filing past and then fell in and marched back to the city with the Irish Citizen Army. It was exhilarating. At no period could I see the first part of the Army. The men and boys were whistling tunes to serve them in lieu of bands. On they swung to Beresford Place, where they lined up in front of Liberty Hall. Jim Larkin and my father spoke to them from the windows. When one man called out, "We'll stick by you to the end," he was loudly and heartily cheered. Captain White gave the order of dismissal and the men broke ranks but did not go away. When they were not drilling, or sleeping, or eating, they thronged round Liberty Hall, attesting that "where the heart lieth there turneth the feet." When the strike was over and the men had won the right to organize, the membership of the Irish Citizen Army dwindled rapidly. When one takes into consideration the arduous {6} work and the long hours that comprised the daily round of these men, the wonder was that there were so many of them willing to meet after working hours to be drilled into perfect soldiers. But they knew that by so doing they were, in the words of my father, "signifying their adhesion to the principle that the freedom of a people must in the last analysis rest in the hands of that people--that there is no outside force capable of enforcing slavery upon a people really resolved to be free, and valuing freedom more than life." Also that "The Irish Citizen Army in its constitution pledges its members to fight for a Republican Freedom in Ireland. Its members are, therefore, of the number who believe that at the call of duty they may have to lay down their lives for Ireland, and have so trained themselves that at the worst the laying down of their lives shall constitute the starting point of another glorious tradition--a tradition that will keep alive the soul of the nation." And this was the knowledge that lightened all the labor of drilling and soldiering.