If it had not been for the drill and discipline of the volunteers then 1916 would have been a fl ash in the pan…but it proved a double-edged sword. At that time the Ireland we dreamed of was a possibility… We lost it when we took up the gun.

…they were preparing an insurrection, that they had established at the beginning a military council to work out plans, that at the fi rst meeting of that Council Joe Plunkett produced complete plans for a Dublin insurrection, on which it appeared he had been working for years, and that these had been adopted practically in their entirety. He told me the plan, and it was identical, even to the names of the buildings occupied, with what actually happened. He told me also that they were negotiating for German assistance, but would go on in any case, and that they contemplated a Dublin insurrection only, an insurrection which would make its protest, in the name of the Historic Irish Nation, against the Redmond slavishness, and would re-assert Ireland's claim to Independence.