A very serious outbreak organised by Sinn Feiners occurred in Dublin on Monday. A large body of men, mostly armed, seized St. Stephen╒s Green and the Post Office, and also houses in St Stephen╒s Green, Sackville Street (where the Post Office is situated), the adjacent Abbey Street, and on the quays along the Liffey. The telegraph and telephone lines were cut.
The rebels opened fire on soldiers and police killing about a dozen and wounding about eighteen. The casualties suffered by the Sinn Feiners are not exactly known.
It is worthy of note that two of the men killed by the rebels and six of the wounded were National Volunteers. The force organised by the Irish Nationalist party in the months immediately preceding the outbreak of the war evidently played an important and courageous part in grappling with the outbreak.
The official notification states that no disturbances of any kind have occurred in Cork, Limerick, Ennis, Tralee, or either riding of Tipperary.
The situation is declared by the authorities to be well in hand. Troops from the Curragh were drafted into Dublin in the course of Monday.
Mr. Birrell, whose announcement in the House of Commons yesterday afternoon was the first official intimation of the outbreak, admitted that the rebels on Monday night were in possession of four or five different parts of the city, but denied that they were in possession of the whole city.
In view of what has happened, it is interesting to recall that at a meeting of the Dublin Corporation last week one of the members read a memorandum which purported to have been drawn up by Dublin Castle authorising the police and military to hold various points of vantage in the city.
