ference may reduce itself to what
is possible; then will they come to realise that he who maintains a
great faith unshaken will make more things possible than the opportunist
of the hour; then will they understand how much more is possible than
they had ever dared to dream: they will have a vision of the goal; and
with that vision will be born a steady enthusiasm, a clear purpose, and
a resolute soul. The regeneration of the land will be no longer a
distant dream but a shaping reality; the living flame will sweep through
all hearts again; and Ireland will enter her last battle for freedom to
emerge and reassume her place among the nations of the earth.

CHAPTER VII

LOYALTY

I

To be loyal to his cause is the finest tribute that can be paid to any
man. And since loyalty to the Irish cause has been the great virtue of
Irishmen through all history, it is time to have some clear thinking as
to who are the Irish rebels and who the true men. When a stupid
Government, grasping our reverence for fidelity, tried to ban our heroes
by calling them felons, it was natural we should rejoin by writing "The
Felons of our Land" and heap ridicule on their purpose. But once this
end was achieved we should have reverted to the normal attitude and
written up as the true Irish Loyalists, Brian the Great, and Shane the
Proud, the valiant Owen Roe and the peerless Tone, Mitchel and
Davis--irreconcilables all. When men revolt against an established evil
it is their loyalty to the outraged truth we honour. We do not extol a
rebel who rebels for rebellion's sake. Let us be clear on this point, or
when we shall have re-established our freedom after centuries of effort
it shall be open to every knave and traitor to challenge our
independence and plot to readmit the enemy. Loyalty is the fine
attribute of the fine nature; the word has been misused and maligned in
Ireland: let us restore it to its rightful honour by remembering it to
be the virtue of our heroes of all time. In considering it from this
view-point we shall find occasion to touch on delicate positions that
have often baffled and worried us--the asserting of our rights while
using the machinery of the Government that denies them, the burning
question of consistency, our attitude towards the political adventurer
on one hand, and towards the honest man of half-measures on the other.
Loyalty involves all this. And it shows that the man who revolts to win
freedom is the same