It is evident that at first the military force available
in Dublin was quite inadequate to meet the insurrection, but by Tuesday it had been augmented by reinforcements from the Curragh and Belfast, and also from England, and, to judge from the casualty lists, to some extent from the Nationalist Volunteers, who of course are, and have been from the beginning, at daggers drawn with the Sinn Feiners. We have pointed out in our leading columns how great is the difficulty of dislodging an armed force in possession of any part of a great city unless you are prepared to treat the city as the Germans have treated Ypres. Only bombardment on a really big scale and by very heavy guns can avail to turn determined men out of substantially built houses. Rifle fire has little or no effect, and if reliance is had on the bayonet the loss of the assailants may be very heavy. That being so, a military cordon—i.e., the isolation of the rebel districts—is the only effective weapon which can be used, and it is a weapon which acts slowly.
