Â鶹Éç

On Monday, April 24th a Proclamation was posted in Dublin announcing that an "Irish Republic" had been formed under a "Provisional Government" of seven men whose names were attached to the document. They were Thomas J. Clarke, Sean MacDiamada, P.H. Pearse, James Connolly, Thomas MacDonagh, Eamonn Ceannt and Joseph Plunkett. In the British House of Commons on Wednesday May 3rd, the Prime Minister of England announced that a Courtmartial had been held, that P.H. Pearse, Thomas J. Clarke, and Thomas MacDonagh had been tried by that body that they had been sentenced and that they had been shot. He added that sentences of three years’ penal servitude had been passed on "three others." We had not up to a late hour this morning received any further intimation regarding the character of the Prime Minister’s statement. In fact no report of yesterday’s proceedings in the British Parliament House was sent out.

We know not the names of the "three others". But the news regarding Thomas J. Clarke, P. H. Pearse, and Thomas MacDonagh is definite. They are numbered with the dead, they have followed the hundreds who were sent to their last account in the streets of Dublin during the terrible week that began with the seizure of a few public buildings and the posting of that unhappy "Proclamation." The signatories to the "Proclamation" challenged the forces of the British Crown and the might of the British Empire. It was a deliberate deed, done with a full knowledge of the inevitable consequences. Rumour has it that three of the other signatories fell in the fray. It is known that the fourth lies wounded in the hands of the military authorities. As yet the roll of Dublin’s dead is incomplete. Perhaps a thousand men who joined in the mad venture have lost their lives. More than a thousand have been sent as prisoners across the Irish Sea. The military losses in killed and wounded number hundreds and amongst these are many men of the Dublin Fusiliers and the Royal Irish Regiment. We must pray for God’s mercy to the souls of the dead; but we must also face the grim facts of the situation calmly and fearlessly. The lives of all these victims "rebels" "soldiers" of the Crown and innocent members of the civilian community – will not have been sacrificed in vain if the people of Ireland are wise and brave enough to shape their future course in the light of the lessons that should be brought home to their minds by the catalogue of the week’s blunders, disasters, crimes and retributions.