Britain's enemy, in this case Germany, has an invitation to stir up the Irish pot. The Firing Squad says the Major-General. We are part of Ireland, not Great Britain says Sinn Fein. And that's what they do. The cardinal remains quiet.
Violence becomes trite, common place.
And so the Easter Rebellion begins. As a historian I don't much believe in Fate, with its connotations of inevitability and determinism. The evidence always indicates to me that the outcome of a given set of events is contingent upon hundreds of interdependent decisions made by fallible human beings within a broad set of possibilities. If I don't believe much in Fate, I believe less in conspiracy theories, the breakfast food of 20 th century paranoids, to explain complicated events. Having said this, I have to add that there is a certain disconcerting inevitability about 20 th century Anglo-Irish history.