itself: it was only the protest of conscientious objectors which was
being lashed into activity under continual provocation--the provocation
of being threatened with the loss of everything they held most dear in
life, and eminently admired by Englishmen for that very fact.

Normally Sinn Feiners and Orangemen were men of peace, the one
economists, the other business men, who might indeed have been easily
pacified had they been openly and sympathetically treated with, instead
of being galled into fury by the taunt of bluff or cowardice, and such
epithets as insignificant, negligible minorities.

In an orgy of majority government both stood out for the sanctity of
minorities, especially when those minorities represented inviolable
principles of vital import to the majority.

It was the method of suppression that really did most of the mischief,
for in addition to casualties and damages there was also considerable
distress, and it at once became necessary to organize a system of food
distribution and relief for the sufferers.

This was largely undertaken by the St. Vincent de Paul Society, under
Sir Henry Robinson, Vice-President of the Local Government Board, and
with the help of the military authorities, who lent motor-lorries and
money, food was distributed to over one hundred thousand persons.

House-to-house visitations were made, and these revealed all forms of
distress, from lack of food, which, of course, it had been impossible to
obtain as long as the city was in a state of siege, down to absolute
ruination of whole families.

In places the city looked like Antwerp during the siege, or London upon
the arrival of the Belgian refugees.

No one has yet been able to estimate the full extent of the material
damage sustained by the reckless bombardment of the city--for no other
word can be used; and though Captain Purcell, the chief of the Dublin
Fire Brigade, gave the rough figure of L2,500,000, this must be taken as
a mere minimum of the extent covered by the conflagrations.

It cannot represent the loss of business, employment, goodwill, trade,
and the thousand and one other losses inseparable from such a
catastrophe.

Take, for example, the loss of the Royal Hibernian Academy, with
thousands of pounds of pictures. No price can repay these, for they
represented perhaps the culminating point, or at least the turning
point, in careers which had had years of hard struggles, and which had
set perhaps a lifetime