The Commission inquiring into the Irish revolt held their first
sitting. in Dublin on Thursday week. Sir Neville Chamberlain, head of the Royal Irish Constabulary, and Chief Commissioner Johnson, head of the Dublin Metropolitan Police, described how all protests against allowing the Arms Act to lapse had been ignored. " High policy " apparently required that the situation in Ireland should be represented as satisfactory, though the police knew that it was not. The head of the Dublin police was subject to the Under- Secretary, who in his turn was the tool of " high policy." Advice to seize seditious centres was always ignored. Houses could not be searched in which it was known that arms wore kept. Nothing must be done to hurt any one's feelings or injure the make-believe that all was well with Ireland. Major Price, of the Intelligence Department, mentioned the interception of a seditious letter to America from members of the National University which actually discussed an armed rising. Mr. Birrell wrote : " The whole letter is rubbish," and Lord Wimborne initialled the opinion. Strange and humiliating evidence indeed
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