Page "Government of Ireland Act 1914" Paragraph 33

However, a fringe element of nationalism, represented by the remaining Irish Volunteers, opposed Irish support for the war effort, believing Irishmen who wanted to " defend the freedom of small nations " should focus on one closer to hand.

In Easter 1916 a rebellion, the Easter Rising, took place in Dublin.

Initially widely condemned in view of the heavy Irish war losses on the Western Front and in the disastrous Gallipoli V beach landing at Cape Helles ( the main nationalist newspaper, the Irish Independent, demanded the execution of the rebels ), the British government's mishandling of the aftermath of the Rising, including the protracted executions of the Rising's leaders by General Maxwell, led to the rise of an Irish republican movement in Sinn Féin, a small previously separatist monarchist party taken over by the rebellion's survivors, after it had been wrongly blamed for the rebellion by the British.