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Doing the enemy’s work they looked for succour and support from that quarter and doubtless they received subsidies in money and kind. Other assistance for which they hoped never arrived for all arms and warlike material which were consigned to them are now at the bottom of the Atlantic. With sinister complacency Germany could look on at the useless sacrifice of Irish lives and the possible enshrouding of Ireland’s true national aspirations. So long as she could create a diversion in her favour which might affect neutral and particularly American opinion, it was nothing to Germany that the name of Ireland should be made a byword among the nations. Her diplomacy on the whole business was characteristically sordid and there may well have been much self-gratification in the Foreign Office in Berlin that Irishmen could be got to sell themselves for so paltry a price.

For some months past there was a good deal of anxiety about the trend of events in Ireland. There was a genuine fear that disturbances would ensue, but against that there was the natural inclination to hope that by some means trouble would be averted. Dublin and Ireland however have been denied this good fortune. On Easter Monday at noon when Dublin business houses, Government offices and departments were closed and thousands of holiday makers were in the streets the powers of anarchy were unloosed with the dire consequences which we are now constrained to record. The men who took the initiative in disturbing the peace of the country have not, and had not, a shred of public sympathy. Whilst they held certain strongholds the military were being called for and longed for by the citizens. These men are now held prisoners in England and the leaders who organised and the prominently active spirits in this "rising" deserve little consideration or compassion. So far as we are concerned when we think of the many valuable lives lost, the hundreds of innocent victims – many of them buried in unknown graves because their friends could not be discovered, when we think of the enormous material damage which has already been done and the huge loss of trade and employment which must be the consequence, we confess that we care little what is to become of the leaders who are morally responsible for this terrible mischief. The young fellows who went out however, many of them from 15 to 19 years of age, innocent, ignorant, misguided and irresponsible, knowing little of what they were committed to or its consequences, deserve to be placed upon a different footing, and we trust they will be treated with leniency. Others, we hear were induced to go out in the belief that they were going on a long march and found themselves in a trap. These also deserve special consideration and separate treatment.