their case, for again, it is a question of an unauthorized egoism, an egoism not upon the official schedule of edifying war-aims. Montégut became aware of this when he tried to diagnose John Mitchel as a revolutionary, who might expect the sympathy of Europe. “The most anarchical Irishman,” he wrote, “the most fiery partisan of physical force is, in fact, less versed in liberal ideas than the most obstinate monarchist on the Continent.” As for John Mitchel, his French critic estimated him in terms which are as true of his disciples to-day as of the Young Ireland Movement and its predecessors. “He is revolutionary on the surface, in his accent and expression, but not in spirit or in principle”; such was the judgment of the first impartial admirer who was attracted to Mitchel by the purely literary qualities of that masterpiece of passion and irony, The Jail Journal. The most learned of the leaders of Sinn Féin, with a carelessness incredible in a professional historian, has tried to dismiss Emile Montégut as a hack journalist of the Entente! This sixty year old essay on John Mitchel contains, nevertheless, a classic description of the Irish rebel, as he exists, and has always existed, to the discomfiture of those who do not appreciate the “splendid isolation” of the Sinn Féin idea. Summing up the Young Ireland leader’s attitude in foreign affairs, Montégut says:

“Do not ask the author if he is Catholic, Liberal, or Republican, do not ask what government he would give to Ireland. He hardly knows. He does know that he hates England with all the forces of his soul, and that he is ready to rebel against her on every occasion, and that there is no party of which he is not prepared to declare himself the defender, provided that England perish: French sans-culottes, Austrian aristocrats, Russian despotism please him in turn. The revolution of February drove him to revolt; but do not think that he was consistent with himself, and that he was much afflicted by the death of the Republic! Of all succeeding events he asks but one thing; will they or will they not hurt England? Do they contain an occasion for the humiliation of Carthage? He applauds Mazzini, the enemy of Catholicism; likewise he would applaud an Ultramontane Bishop of Ireland blessing the standards of a Celtic insurrection. He salutes the French Republic with hope; but when on the pontoons of Bermuda he learns of Louis Napoleon’s election to the Presidency, he gives a great shout of joy; on his arrival in America he learns the news from the east, and he echoes the warlike trumpets of the Tsar which resound on the Danube. In each of these events he hears the good news: England’s agony!”

European history moves on, but Ireland’s hymn of hate is still unaltered, and to its accompaniment Sinn Féin adapts the incidents, great and trivial, which mark the progress of a conflict that is changing the world. Cut off from the war by intellectual and geographical barriers, Ireland is, therefore, not exactly the most fruitful ground in which to sow the ideas which have aroused to a frenzy all but a few disillusioned neutrals. The pathetic dreams of Liberal forward-lookers, the pious platitudes of Dr. Woodrow Wilson, and the prize-fighting rhetoric of embattled bureaucrats and newspapermen fall alike upon deaf Irish ears, which listen only for the rending and cracking of an abhorred political system. To speak of the sufferings of Belgians, Poles, and Serbians is merely to suggest analogies from Irish history; the reaction to the stimulus of atrocity-mongering is unexpected. Even the Russian revolution aroused only a passive, almost academic interest, until Lenin and Trotsky referred specifically to the question of Irish freedom. Then messages of congratulation to the Bolsheviki were sent from those who had been openly supporting Count Czernin in his amazing debate with the representatives of the first Social Democracy to engage in diplomatic pourparlers with a foreign power. But the capitalist press had scarcely published its execration of Irish “Bolshevism,” when the Ukrainian peace was joyously greeted by Sinn Féin spokesmen, who were unperturbed in their unholy innocence of international capitalism, by the discreditable circumstances of that event, and its subsequently disintegrating effect upon Russia. These patriots, as Montégut said of their forerunner, Mitchel, “would unhesitatingly sacrifice modern civilization if there were no other means of striking England to the dust.” Unfortunately, on this occasion, their ignorance of the solidarity of the capitalist Internationalism betrayed them into an easy acceptance of a situation by no means repugnant to the aims of their adversaries. The defeat of Bolshevism was the first great Allied victory of the war, tempered only by the melancholy reflection that Germany would be the immediate beneficiary of this restoration of “Law and Order”—that marvellous euphemism which covers a multitude of sins.

If the isolation of Ireland from European politics has stultified her erratic excursions into foreign affairs, it has even more seriously affected the political relations of England and Ireland during the past four years. The Britisher, sympathetic or otherwise, is apparently quite incapable of realizing the fathomless indifference of the vast majority of the Irish nation towards the issues of the present conflict in Europe. Naive Liberals have been heard inquiring with plaintive optimism: “But surely you Irish can appreciate the seriousness of a German victory, even if you are not willing to fight for England”? And a look of incredulous despair follows, when the composure of the Irishman is evidently undisturbed by the lurid tableau of the victorious super-Hun, composed for sceptics on such occasions. He usually is polite enough to convey to his interlocutor his belief that no such triumph is possible for any of the belligerents. This perfectly intelligible and essentially neutral attitude has never failed to exasperate even more profoundly than pro-Germanism, the legendary malady of all neutrals who fail to accept the Allies and their policies unreservedly. As it is those who themselves denounce the Treaties in which the real aims of the Allied “democracies” were secretly formulated who also insist with the greatest unction upon the moral superiority of the Allies, the embarrassment of the impartial is not diminished by this demand upon their credulity.

While one may expect the average man to put faith in his country “right or wrong,” he has exceeded the bounds of patriotic gregariousness when he asks foreigners to display an identical devotion. The imposition is all the more intolerable when made, not by the plain man in the street, but by intellectuals, professing the use of reason. It is positively revolting to the Irishman who, not being a citizen of those small nations happily outside the dominion of the belligerents, is prohibited from detailed neutral argument in defence of his own position. Denmark can speak through a Georg Brandes, but Ireland may not even quote the Allied press in support of her contentions. The Irish case for neutrality is expurgated of necessity—of military necessity! The possibilities of arriving at any understanding with the Allied countries have, therefore, been seriously hampered, apart altogether from the inherent obstacles to an admission on the part of Anglo-Saxondom that its statecraft is not an admirable combination of the choicest maxims of Holy Writ. Naturally, such conditions have in no wise modified the splendid isolation of Sinn Féin, since they have rendered free intercommunication between Ireland and the outside