and lamentable beyond expression, but not mean
and not unheroic.

It was hard enough that our men in the English armies should be slain
for causes which no amount of explanation will ever render less foreign
to us, or even intelligible; but that our men who were left should be
killed in Ireland fighting against the same England that their brothers
are fighting for ties the question into such knots of contradiction as
we may give up trying to unravel. We can only think--this has
happened--and let it unhappen itself as best it may.

We say that the time always finds the man, and by it we mean: that when
a responsibility is toward there will be found some shoulder to bend for
the yoke which all others shrink from. It is not always nor often the
great ones of the earth who undertake these burdens--it is usually the
good folk, that gentle hierarchy who swear allegiance to mournfulness
and the under dog, as others dedicate themselves to mutton chops and the
easy nymph. It is not my intention to idealise any of the men who were
concerned in this rebellion. Their country will, some few years hence,
do that as adequately as she has done it for those who went before them.

Those of the leaders whom I knew were not great men, nor brilliant--that
is they were more scholars than thinkers, and more thinkers than men of
action; and I believe that in no capacity could they have attained to
what is called eminence, nor do I consider they coveted any such public
distinction as is noted in that word.

But in my definition they were good men--men, that is, who willed no
evil, and whose movements of body or brain were unselfish and healthy.
No person living is the worse off for having known Thomas MacDonagh, and
I, at least, have never heard MacDonagh speak unkindly or even harshly
of anything that lived. It has been said of him that his lyrics were
epical; in a measure it is true, and it is true in the same measure that
his death was epical. He was the first of the leaders who was tried and
shot. It was not easy for him to die leaving behind two young children
and a young wife, and the thought that his last moment must have been
tormented by their memory is very painful. We are all fatalists when we
strike against power, and I hope he put care from him as the soldiers
marched him out.

The O'Rahilly also I knew, but not intimately, and I can only speak of a
good humour, a courtesy, and an energy that never failed. He was a man
of unce