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| | Guardian Unlimited Books | Review | On the road to revolution |
 | | Pearse and the others on the military committee kept the plans for the rising secret until the truth was forced out of them, literally at the 11th hour, by Eoin MacNeill, chief of staff of the Irish Volunteers. |
 | | Like many of the 1916 leaders, MacNeill was a scholar, but, due in part perhaps to his Northern Irish birth, he was cannier and more sceptical than Pearse the blood-drunk poet. |
 | | MacNeill was willing to go along with a military uprising only if it had some chance of success. |
| books.guardian.co.uk /review/story/0,12084,1576218,00.html (1272 words) |
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