at us, and prove thereby to France and Russia that, tyrants at
home, we only used them to fight a battle we dared not fight alone.

I say nothing here of the motives that inspired the rebels, nor the
immediate causes that provoked them to rise, nor the nature of the
methods by which they were "stamped out"; I only state the moral of
their failure, and I must take this opportunity to thank Lord Decies,
the official Press censor, for the freedom with which he has allowed me
to speak at what I feel to be a very critical juncture in the history of
my country and of our common Empire; for I have gone upon the principle
that it is far better to distribute the blame all round than to try and
make the Sinn Feiners the scapegoats of faults which each party
contributed towards the catastrophe.

There never was, I believe, an Irish crime--if crime it can be
called--which had not its roots in an English folly; and I repeat here
what the late Mr. Stead always impressed upon me: Ireland is our school
of Empire, and the mistakes which would lose us Ireland would lose us
the Empire.

It is England's move next: we have protested in blood; the eyes of
Europe await her decision.

At the same time I cannot help blaming Irishmen as well for the
catastrophe, for politicians of all parties have been tending towards
isolating their followers in the old ancestral bigotries, instead of
drawing them together in sympathy, as Mr. William O'Brien has been
advocating for years, with the result that we are now threatened with
permanent constitutional separation for another generation.

It is a mistake which all the younger men deplore, and which could
easily have been avoided by bringing in the men of Ulster into the
national deliberations, as they have every right, in the name of their
Southern followers, and then giving them the option to veto the
application of any measure to their own districts--which would have been
the best guarantee of justice which the Nationalists could have given
and the most they had a right to expect of England, whose political
position of dependence upon the Irish vote is a scandal of empire.

These things, however, are beyond the scope of the present pages, and I
shall confine myself with thanking those of my many friends who have
helped me in compiling this volume--notably Councillor Keogh, who was
with me during the Battle of Mount Street Bridge, and others, whose
criticisms helped me considerably. Likewise I mus