and
prosperity of the whole nation and of all its parts, cherishing all the
children of the nation equally and oblivious of the differences
carefully fostered by an alien Government, which have divided a minority
from the majority in the past.

Until our arms have brought the opportune moment for the establishment
of a permanent national Government representative of the whole people of
Ireland and elected by the suffrages of all her men and women, the
Provisional Government hereby constituted will administer the civil and
military affairs of the Republic in trust for the people.

We place the cause of the Irish Republic under the protection of the
Most High God, whose blessing we invoke upon our arms, and we pray that
none who serves that cause will dishonour it by cowardice, inhumanity,
or rapine. In this supreme hour the Irish nation must, by its valour and
discipline, and by the readiness of its children to sacrifice themselves
for the common good, prove itself worthy of the august destiny to which
it is called.

Signed on behalf of the Provisional Government:--

THOMAS J. CLARKE.
SEAN MACDIARMADA.
THOMAS MACDONAGH.
J. H. PEARSE. EAMONN CEANNT.
JAMES CONNOLLY. JOSEPH PLUNKETT.

But to continue the narrative. According to a young woman cleric in the
G.P.O. the Sinn Feiners had chosen the place for their headquarters
partly because they were already familiar with the place, which was
proved by the way they settled down each to his own work the moment they
entered it, and partly because they had already made it a storehouse.

All this while much the same process was going on all over the city. The
attack upon the Castle was hardly less dramatic than that upon the
G.P.O., but it seems to have been undertaken by fewer troops of
Volunteers and carried out less cleverly, so that it eventually fell
back into the hands of the military. I believe it was originally
intended to burn the place to the ground, as symbolical of the
centuries of tyranny with which it has been associated. Strategically it
might not have been of such value to the insurgents, but the moral
effect of its capture would undoubtedly have been enormous upon the
provinces if they had been able to telegraph it within the first few
hours of the rising.

The Castle, however, had never formed the main p