o the late
cowardice and poltroonery of the patriots. _Even Italians can fight_"
(Letter of C. Lever from Florence, August 19th, 1848).

It is only the truth that wounds. It is that reproach that has cursed
Ireland for a century.

Sedition, the natural garment for an Irishman to wear, has been for a
hundred years a bloodless sedition. It is this fiery shirt of Nessus
that has driven our strong men mad. How to shed our blood with honour,
how to give our lives for Ireland--that has been, that is the problem
of Irish nationality.

Chapter VII

THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS

It would be idle to attempt to forecast the details of a struggle
between Great Britain and Germany. That is a task that belongs to the
War Department of the two States. I have assigned myself merely to
point out that such a struggle is inevitable, and to indicate what
I believe to be the supreme factors in the conflict, and how one of
these, Ireland, and that undoubtedly the most important factor, has
been overlooked by practically every predecessor of Germany in the
effort to make good at sea. The Spaniards in Elizabeth's reign,
the French of Louis XIV and of the Directory took some steps, it
is true, to challenge England's control of Ireland, but instead of
concentrating their strength upon that line of attack they were
content to dissipate it upon isolated expeditions and never once to
push home the assault on the one point that was obviously the key
to the enemy's whole position. At any period during that last three
centuries, with Ireland gone, England was, if not actually at the
mercy of her assailants, certainly reduced to impotency beyond her own
shores. But while England knew the value to herself of Ireland, she
appreciated to the full the fact that this profitable juxtaposition
lay on her right side hidden from the eyes of Europe.

"Will anyone assert," said Gladstone, "that we would have dared to
treat Ireland as we have done had she lain, not between us and the
ocean, but between us and the continent?" And while the bulk of
England, swollen to enormous dimensions by the gains she drew from
Ireland interposed between her victim and Europe, her continental
adversaries were themselves the victims of that strange mental disease
psychologists term the collective illusion. All the world saw that
which in fact did not exist. The greatness of England as they beheld
it, imposing, powerful, and triumphant, existed not on the rocky base
the