The evidence furnished from various sources tends to accentuate the previous impressions of the seriousness of the whole affair.
The fighting has not been the less desperate and persistent because in the main it has not taken place in the open.
As the rebels have been able to maintain possession of various important buildings and points of vantage the task of dislodging them is still uncompleted.
There is a natural reluctance on the part of the military to destroy these buildings, but apparently a cordon has been drawn round them, from which the rebels will find it difficult to escape.
Headed, it is said, by a notorious Syndicalist, who has styled himself "Commandant of the Irish Republic Army,'' and who dispenses patronage in the form of passports, the insurgents have contrived to strike an amazingly shrewd blow at the forces of authority as the momentary success of their tactics has clearly indicated.
The fact that they still hold strategic points in Dublin speaks for itself.
Their numbers have been variously estimated.
The Sinn Feiners seem to be a few thousand strong, but their forces have been augmented by dupes much more numerous than themselves - by larrikins and rabble not loath to enrol under the flag of an Irish Republic or to embrace the opportunity of attacking the police and the military.
Undoubtedly this has been a well-organised and carefully-planned rising.
• The reference in the cable news recently to the possible nationalisation of the whisky trade reminds one that the British distilleries are controlled by the Imperial Government, not with the idea of regulating the sale of the spirit, but because it has been found that it is essential for the manufacture of high-explosive shells.
Whisky is used in one of the many processes by which cotton is converted into gun cotton.
Cotton steeped in pure alcohol becomes macerated and purified, and is thereby rendered a safe substance to be used as the basis of an explosive agent.
Since the outbreak of war the British Government has been taking for munition purposes one-third of the output of the large distilleries, but now that more munition factories have been established, and the output of high explosive shells is being increased materially, the Government is able to take all the whisky the large distilleries can make.
• A party from Balclutha who went to Pounawea on a fishing trip during the Easter holidays report red cod as remarkably plentiful in the Catlins estuary (says the Free Press).
In but a few hauls of a drag net some 500 fish were caught, and on one occasion it looked as if the net would be broken, so great was the weight of fish.
Some of the cod weighed as much as 7lb.
There is little demand for these fish in the Pounawea district, and the bulk of the catch had to be left to rot on the beach.
• At a recent sitting of the Pearling Commission which has been set up in Western Australia, Captain Dalziel said the importation of white divers was a failure.
Within four months two men had been paralysed, and the monotony of being confined upon luggers for months at a stretch proved too much for the others, and they left.
White divers disliked working in deep water.
They appreciated the risks more than the Japanese divers, who were fatalists. - ODT, 1.5.1916.
