The Government had many warnings of what was brewing. But Mr. Birrell,
the Chief Secretary, who in frivolity seemed a contemporary embodiment
of Nero, deemed cheap wit a sufficient reply to all remonstrances, and
had to confess afterwards that he had utterly miscalculated the forces
with which he had to deal. He was completely taken by surprise when, on
the 20th of April, an attempt to land weapons from a German vessel,
escorted by a submarine from which Sir Roger Casement landed in the West
of Ireland, proved that the Irish rebels were in league with the enemy;
and even after this ominous event, he did nothing to provide against the
outbreak that occurred in Dublin four days later. The rising in the
capital, and in several other places in the South of Ireland, was not
got under for a week, during which time more than 170 houses had been
burnt, L2,000,000 sterling worth of property destroyed or damaged, and
1,315 casualties had been suffered, of which 304 were fatal.
The aims of the insurgents were disclosed in a proclamation which
referred to the administration in Ireland as a "long usurpation by a
foreign people and government.
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