be forced into
the English Army, and sent to fight English battles in some part of the
world. Is not that within their right? They are supposed to be free men,
but they are made to feel that they are prisoners, who may be compelled
to lay down their lives for a cause that is not worth 'three rows of
pins' to them.

"It is very probable that these poor Connaught peasants know little or
nothing of the meaning of the war. Their blood is not stirred by the
memories of Kossovo, and they have no burning desire to die for Serbia.
They would much prefer to be allowed to till their own potato gardens in
peace in Connemara. Small nationalities, and the wrongs of Belgium and
Rheims Cathedral, and all the other cosmopolitan considerations that
rouse the enthusiasm of the Irish Party, but do not get enough of
recruits in England, are far too high-flying for uneducated peasants,
and it seems a cruel wrong to attack them because they cannot rise to
the level of the disinterested Imperialism of Mr. T. P. O'Connor and the
rest of the New Brigade.

"But in all the shame and humiliation of this disgraceful episode, what
angers one most is that there is no one, not even one of their own
countrymen, to stand up and defend them. Their crime is that they are
not ready to die for England. Why should they? What have they or their
forbears ever got from England that they should die for her? Mr. Redmond
will say a Home Rule Act on the Statute Book. But any intelligent
Irishman will say a simulacrum of Home Rule, with an express notice that
it is never to come into operation.

"This war may be just or unjust, but any fair-minded man will admit
that it is England's war, not Ireland's. When it is over, if England
wins, she will hold a dominant power in this world, and her manufactures
and her commerce will increase by leaps and bounds. Win or lose, Ireland
will go on, in our old round of misgovernment, intensified by a grinding
poverty which will make life intolerable. Yet the poor fellows who do
not see the advantage of dying for such a Cause are to be insulted as
'shirkers' and 'cowards,' and the men whom they have raised to power and
influence have not one word to say on their behalf.

"If there is to be conscription, let it be enforced all round, but it
seems to be the very intensity of injustice to leave English shirkers by
the million to go free, and coerce the small remnant of the Irish race
into a war which they do not understand, and wh