The question remains: was the Rising which began 90 years ago today necessary? It was carried through by a minority within a minority, and Home Rule had reached the statute book.
On the other hand, Ireland was being absorbed into an imperial conflict, and it is improbable that the constitutional nationalist movement could have achieved independence, as distinct from autonomy. After all, the 1920 Government of Ireland Act - Britain's last offer before it was forced to negotiate with the revolutionaries - envisaged two "Stormont-status" parliaments within the United Kingdom.
Shortly after Britain declared war on Germany, a group of Irish separatists formed a revolutionary conspiracy. They believed they had a duty to strike because Ireland was at a critical point in its history. The parliamentary leader, John Redmond, had declared his support for Britain's war campaign. Although Eoin Mac Neill, president of the minority Irish Volunteers, thought they should wait, a military committee of the secret IRB began to draw up plans for a rising.
Joe Lee argues, in the current issue of History Ireland, that a blood sacrifice was a purpose of the Rising for several of the leaders, but it was not the sole purpose for any one of them. In his foreword to Séamas Ó Buachalla's edition of the letters of PH Pearse, FSL Lyons identified their outstanding feature: "The rigorous exclusion of the poet and dreamer from a scene dominated by the able organiser. . ."
In October 1914 Pearse shared his sense of history with the Irish-American sympathiser Joseph McGarrity, when writing to seek money for arms: "Its coming in time may mean the success of whatever we have to do; it may mean victory. Its failure to come may mean either a bloody debacle like '98 or a dreary fizzling out like '48 or '67." He continued: "We gain daily in the country as Redmond's treachery or imbecility becomes more manifest. The recruiting campaign has failed utterly and already he is a discredited politician. The subsidised press of course represents the country as being with him, but it is not. Even those who support his leadership are overtly or covertly against his recruiting efforts."
Nevertheless, an estimated 20,000 Irish nationalists were among the millions sent to their death during the Great War. John Redmond's brother, Willie, who served as MP for East Clare, was "convinced that the future freedom, welfare and happiness of the Irish people depend on the part Ireland plays in the war". He died for Ireland, too - at the battle of Messines Ridge in 1917 - but the freedom of small nations proved chimerical. The sacrifice of the Ulster Division, on the other hand, strengthened the hand of unionism.
Pearse regarded the insurrection which broke out on Easter Monday, April 24th, 1916, as largely symbolic. By Friday he concluded he and his comrades had done enough to "redeem Dublin from many shames and make her name splendid among the names of cities."
He claimed they would have accomplished more than saving Ireland's honour, had their plans for a rising of the whole country been allowed to go ahead. "Of the fatal countermanding order. . . I shall not speak further. Both Eoin Mac Neill and we have acted in the best interests of Ireland."
After the surrender, Pearse wrote to his mother: "I do not hope or even desire to live. . . People will say hard things about us now, but we shall be remembered by posterity and blessed by unborn generations." At his court martial he appealed, as president of the provisional government, to the British government "to accept my single life in forfeiture, and give a general amnesty to the brave men and boys who have fought at my bidding".
In the circumstances, it appears unlikely that an independent state could have been wrested peacefully from Britain. David Lloyd George's response to the electoral victory of Sinn Féin was to declare that the secession of any part of Ireland from the United Kingdom was non-negotiable.
The War of Independence ended with the Truce on July 11th, 1921. The astute parliamentarian Tim Healy conceded that Sinn Féin "had won in three years what we did not win in 40".
WB Yeats, whose poetic mind knew how to distil truth from fact, said he never thought the Treaty negotiators "would get as much out of Lloyd George and so am pleased . . . " Later he remarked presciently in the Senate that the North would "be won in the end, and not because we fight it, but because we govern this country well. We can do that by creating a system of culture which will represent the whole of this country and which will draw the imagination of the young towards it."
The Civil War, and not the Rising, copper-fastened partition. The Treaty split allowed the unionist regime to be consolidated and abandoned Northern nationalists. It is inconceivable that Pearse would have fomented anarchy in 1922, having been prepared to accept Home Rule as a stepping stone a decade earlier. Those who took up arms against an Irish government set back by generations the opportunity to create a new society.
In a recent book the philosopher Anthony Grayling asks: was the Allied bombing of civilians in the closing stages of the second World War a necessity or a crime? He concludes it was a crime and not a necessity. The RAF persisted in indiscriminate bombing by night, even when it became clear that Nazi Germany was already beaten.
Similarly, while armed struggle was a necessary component of the Irish independence movement in 1916-21, since then it has been counter-productive. Thank God it has finally ended.