The conditions in the trenches of the Western Front broke his health again, and he returned to Dublin shortly after the failure of the abortive Easter Revolution on sick leave, seeing the wreckage of the city's centre caused by the fighting that had occurred there. He was also beginning to rely too heavily on alcohol in this period as a psychological palliative to the stress of military active service. Whilst in Dublin he rejected offers of a permanent staff position, and returned to rejoin the Battalion in the line. On leaving Ireland on 14 July 1916 he predicted that the Easter Revolutionaries of 1916 would be lionized as patriots in the near future of Ireland's history, whilst those who had fought with the British Arms in World War I would be condemned. Kettle was angered by actions of the Revolutionary faction that had staged the failed revolt, feeling that they were marring Constitutional Nationalism's long worked for strategy of the rebirth of a sovereign Irish state finding its place amidst the nations in a civilized fashion, with good spirit amidst its neighbours of the British Isles.