This knowledge was not in wide circulation, but neither was it a great secret, and the official telegram calling Childers to naval service was sent to the Dublin headquarters of the Irish Volunteers, the group to which he had made the delivery. Although in 1914 it could be argued that, in the case of war, the Irish Volunteers might fight on the side of Britain as a means of securing bargaining power in home rule negotiations, these weapons were used against British soldiers, in the Easter Rising of 1916. However, Childers believed that small nations such as Belgium and Serbia would benefit from Britain's defeat of Germany and – as a prospectively independent nation – Ireland too would gain.