the re-assembly of Parliament on April 27th
he expressed the "feeling of detestation and horror" with which he and
his colleagues had regarded the events in Dublin; a feeling which he
believed to be shared "by the overwhelming mass of the people of
Ireland." On May 3rd, in a statement to the Press, he denounced fiercely
"this wicked move" of men who "have tried to make Ireland the cat's-paw
of Germany." "Germany plotted it, Germany organized it, Germany paid for
it." The men who were Germany's agents "remained in the safe remoteness
of American cities," while "misguided and insane young men in Ireland
had risked, and some of them had lost, their lives in an insane
anti-patriotic movement." It was anti-patriotic, he urged, because
Ireland held to the choice she had made, to the opinion which thousands
of Irish soldiers had sealed with their blood. It was "not half so much
treason to the cause of the Allies as treason to the cause of Home
Rule."

On the day when that statement appeared the sequel had begun to unroll
itself. In the House of Commons Mr. Asquith announced the trial,
sentence and shooting of three signatories to the Republican
proclamation--Pearse, Clarke and MacDonagh. With the exception of James
Connolly, these were the men most directly answerable for launching an
attempt which had cost five hundred lives and destroyed over two
millions' worth of property, Redmond accepted their doom as just.

"This outbreak happily seems to be over. It has been dealt with with
firmness, which was not only right, but it was the duty of the
Government so to deal with it."

But now that example had been made, he held that other thoughts should
guide those in authority.

"As the rebellion, or the outbreak, call it what you like, has been put
down with firmness, I do beg the Government, and I speak from the very
bottom of my heart and with all my earnestness, not to show undue
hardship or severity to the great masses of those who are implicated, on
whose shoulders there lies a guilt far different from that which lies
upon the instigators and promoters of the outbreak. Let them, in the
name of God, not add this to the wretched, miserable memories of the
Irish people, to be stored up perhaps for generations, but let them deal
with it in such a spirit of leniency as was recently exhibited in South
Africa by General Botha, and in that way pave the way to the possibility
... that out of the ashes of this miserable tragedy there