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killed; there was no relief after a fixed number of missions.
    I was writing poetry in the last year that I spent at school, all of it very bad.
    In the autumn of 1915 my father took advantage of a break clause in the lease to give up South Hill, the house at Blackrock. I think he was concerned at the rising cost of everything due to the war and the mounting income tax, which was to rise to the unprecedented figure of six shillings in the pound. I think, too, he felt that the house held so many memories of Fred for my mother and myself that it would be better to get rid of it and start again. What he did seems curious now in these days of total war, because for the Christmas holidays he took my mother and myself on a trip to Rome and Naples.
    Wars were localised in those days, when the range of aircraft was small and bombing far behind the lines was not a serious menace. The Western Front was ablaze with war from Switzerland to the sea but this war was completely static; there was nothing to prevent the normal express trains full of tourists from running as usual fifty miles behind the lines, and no currency restrictions then impeded foreign travel. One might have thought that the turmoil of war would have prevented my father from leaving his work to take his annual allowance of six weeks’ leave, but it didn’t. He was a very conscientious man who would never have put his personal interests above the job. I can only conclude that war affected daily life in those days less than it does now; probably civil service staffs were larger, also, for the work they had to do.
    Rome was full of officers in magnificent uniforms frequently with sky-blue, flowing cloaks; the Italians in those days believed in getting some fun out of a war. Naples and Capri followed. My parents prolonged their leisurely holiday so that I had to travel back to Shrewsbury alone from Naples, an interesting and stimulating experience for a sixteen year old boy who spoke virtually no Italian and only schoolroom French. I think this journey did me a lot of good; although I had to change trains unexpectedly two or three times I had no real difficulties; when I got back to school I found that very few boys had made a journey of that length through wartime Europe. I think my parents showed a good deal of insight and wisdom in pushing me off on it.
    The Easter holidays of 1916, in Dublin, gave me experience of another sort. This is not the place to write a history of the Irish rebellion, though to understand my little part in it a few words may be necessary to outline that half forgotten rising.
    For some years Irish nationalism and dislike of British rule had been growing, though the province of Ulster was loyal to Britain. Home Rule for Ireland had been much discussed, but neither the Southern Irish nor the Ulstermen wanted to see the country divided. The Southern Irish were in the majority and wanted complete separation from Britain. The Ulstermen would not agree to any scheme for Home Rule that would place them in the minority, and they armed to prevent forcible incorporation into a United Ireland. The Southern Irish, later to be headed by the Sinn Fein party, armed a volunteer army to resist the Ulstermen and to unite their country in independence from Great Britain.
    As the war went on the Germans established contact with the Sinn Fein volunteers by submarine and did everything within their power to stimulate a rising of Sinn Feinagainst British rule, with the object of making a rebellion in Ireland which would cause the diversion of British troops from the Western Front. In this they were successful, for after a series of preliminary incidents a full-scale armed rebellion broke out in Dublin on Easter Monday of 1916.
    The principal street in Dublin is a wide thoroughfare known then as Sackville Street, and now as O’Connell Street. In the middle of this stands the General Post Office, a massive stone building which was, of course, my father’s domain and