nd entirely disregarded logic or
economics or force. He said--such a thing has to be done and so far as
one man can do it I will do it, and he bowed straightaway to the task.

It is mournful to think of men like these having to take charge of
bloody and desolate work, and one can imagine them say, "Oh! cursed
spite," as they accepted responsibility.

CHAPTER XI

LABOUR AND THE INSURRECTION.

No person in Ireland seems to have exact information about the
Volunteers, their aims, or their numbers. We know the names of the
leaders now. They were recited to us with the tale of their execution;
and with the declaration of a Republic we learned something of their
aim, but the estimate of their number runs through the figures ten,
thirty, and fifty thousand. The first figure is undoubtedly too slender,
the last excessive, and something between fifteen and twenty thousand
for all Ireland would be a reasonable guess.

Of these, the Citizen Army or Labour side of the Volunteers, would not
number more than one thousand men, and it is with difficulty such a
figure could be arrived at. Yet it is freely argued, and the theory will
grow, that the causes of this latest insurrection should be sought among
the labour problems of Dublin rather than in any national or patriotic
sentiment, and this theory is buttressed by all the agile facts which
such a theory would be furnished with.

It is an interesting view, but in my opinion it is an erroneous one.

That Dublin labour was in the Volunteer movement to the strength of,
perhaps, two hundred men, may be true--it is possible there were more,
but it is unlikely that a greater number, or, as many, of the Citizen
Army marched when the order came. The overwhelming bulk of Volunteers
were actuated by the patriotic ideal which is the heritage and the
burden of almost every Irishman born out of the Unionist circle, and
their connection with labour was much more manual than mental.

This view of the importance of labour to the Volunteers is held by two
distinct and opposed classes.

Just as there are some who find the explanation of life in a sexual
formula, so there is a class to whom the economic idea is very dear, and
beneath every human activity they will discover the shock of wages and
profit. It is truly there, but it pulls no more than its weight, and in
Irish life the part played by labour has not yet been a weighty one;
although on every view it is