: Doing My Bit For Ireland by Skinnider Margaret - Ireland History Easter Rising 1916

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zation as the poetry of the "Celtic Revival."

There was a gospel of "passive resistance," too, which led Irishmen to refuse to pay taxes or take any part in the Anglicizing of Ireland. It was this phase that soon won the disapproval of the party that stood for parliamentary activity, and naturally it aroused dissatisfaction in England.

From Ash Street the countess took me to Glasnevin Cemetery, where men lie buried, who, having lived under conditions such as I had just looked upon, spent their lives in protest against the same. Here was the grave of O'Donovan Rossa and a score of others whom I felt were heroes. Here, also, was the grave of Anne Devlin, that brave woman who refused to betray Robert Emmet to the British officers seeking him after his unsuccessful effort to oppose English rule in 1803. These graves and the ruinous houses of Ash Street show patriotism and poverty working for each other and, despite themselves, against each other.

A few months after my visit, there was fighting all about Glasnevin Cemetery between the Royal Irish Constabulary and those who were to carry on the traditions of the great struggle.

Not far from the home of Countess Markievicz stand the Portobello barracks, while much farther off are the Beggar's Bush barracks. She asked me one day if I thought I could make a plan of the latter from observation that would be of use if at any time it was decided to dynamite them. She gave no explanation, did not even tell me in what part of Dublin the barracks were located nor that two officers of the Irish Volunteers had already tried to make this plan and had failed. But she knew that I had had experience in gaging distances and drawing maps. I had just taken a course in calculus, and it was when telling her of my love for mathematics that she set me this task.

There was a large map of Dublin on the wall of a study in her house. I scrutinized this carefully, for I did not know my way alone about Dublin. Then I started out and found the place without great difficulty. It is in the southwestern outskirts of the city, a large, brick structure filling in the right angle where two streets meet. From this corner I walked very slowly along the front of the barracks, counting my paces, gaging the height of the outer wall, and studying the building itself for anything its secretive exterior might betray. I presently noticed that the loopholes which appeared in the wall at regular intervals stopped short a number of yards from the corner. They had been filled in with bricks of a slightly different color than the rest of the wall. At once I asked myself why this had been done and, to discover the reason, if possible, crossed the street to where I could look over the wall. I was able to see that within the right angle at the corner was a small, circular building. It stood close to both the front and side wall, yet did not touch either. There was room for a sentry to walk around it, and all loopholes near it had been bricked up.

The conclusion I drew from this fact was that here was a powder magazine. It was so placed as not to be too noticeable from the street, easily guarded by a sentry, and conveniently near the loopholes in case defense of the barracks became necessary.

I walked away, and next approached the barracks from another side. Here I found that between the street and the main wall was a low outer wall about my own height. When I reached the spot where I thought the magazine ought to be, I took my handkerchief and let it blow--accidentally, of course--over this outer wall. A passing boy gallantly offered to get it for me. Being a woman and naturally curious, I found it necessary to pull myself up on tiptoe to watch him as he climbed over the wall. The ground between the two walls had not been paved, but was of soft earth. I had seen enough. Thanking the boy, I put my handkerchief carefully into my pocket so as not to trouble any one else by making them climb about on Dublin walls, and went on my way.

Upon my return to Leinster Road, I gave the distances and heights I had taken to Madam, describing the way a hole could be dug, under cover of a dark night, between the two walls close to where the magazine stood. A quantity of explosive could be placed in this hole, a long wire could be attached to a detonator and laid along the outer wall for some distance, and then, without being noticed, some one could touch the end of the wire with the battery from a pocket flashlamp. The explosion that followed, I felt sure, would blow up not only the inner wall, but the wall of the magazine and set off the powder stored therein. Madam asked me to write this all down. Later she showed what I had written to the man who was to be Commander-in-chief of the Republican army in Dublin, James Connolly. He knew Beggar's Bush barracks well enough to see that my map was correct and believed the plan practicable enough to carry out in case conscription should become a fact in Ireland despite all promises to the contrary.

But the test I had been put to was, it seemed, not merely a test of my ability to draw maps and figure distances. From that day I was taken into the confidence of the leaders of the movement for making Ireland a republic.

The situation, I learned from Mr. Connolly, was very hopeful, because for the first time in hundreds of years those who were planning a revolution to free Ireland had organized bodies of Irishmen who not only were well trained in the use of firearms, but so full of the spirit of the undertaking that they were ready at a moment's notice to mobilize. There was the Irish Citizen Army which Mr. Connolly had organized after the Transport Workers' strike to defend working-men from onslaughts by the police. I do not believe any one who has not seen what we call a "baton charge" of the Dublin police can quite comprehend the motives which make for such ruthless methods.

In the first place, whenever the police are called out for strike duty or to be on the lookout for rioting, they are given permission to drink all they wish. At the station-houses are big barrels of porter from which the police are expected to help themselves freely. Then the saloon-keepers--we call them publicans--are not expected to refuse a drink to any policeman who demands it, and are paid or not according to the mood of the protector of the public peace. Add to this that the police do not attack in order to disperse a crowd, but to kill. In a public square where a crowd has gathered to hear a labor speech, the police assemble on four sides and, upon a given signal, rush to the center, pushing even innocent passers-by into the midst of the crowd that, on the instant, has become a mob. Then the police use their batons like shillalahs, swinging them around and around before bringing them down upon the heads of the people.

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