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On the one point of uniform the British Government was able to stigmatise the Irish Volunteers as murderers, and this stand it took up, applying the phrase “murder gang” to them. The Irish Volunteers had to pay the penalty of being termed murderers, of being hanged as murderers when caught red-handed instead of getting the treatment of prisoners of war; but more than balancing these disadvantages was the boon of becoming this shadowy foe, which could not be brought to bay.

Unless the country was flooded with troops and artillery—and such a plan had many difficulties in the peculiar circumstances—the affair was likely to be long drawn out. A long-drawn-out campaign was all to the advantage of Sinn Fein. In the first place the world must gradually come to notice the Irish resistance, and the “murder gang” cry of the British Government would hardly ring true if operations were drawn out to the length of a war. Again, time was to the advantage of Sinn Fein in recruiting its strength. As, month after month, raid and arrest went on, and the cities and country places were patrolled by troops not of the country, and wrongs and injustices followed one upon another—wrong houses were raided, wrong arrests were made—friend after friend, neutral after neutral became foe. The impartial observer could see the nation laid on an anvil as it were and welded into a blade of defence.