pe again. The eyes of a small but resolute minority of Irish
Nationalists began to see in red revolution the only hope of Irish
freedom. Physical force may appear a hopeless policy but it was at
least worth preparing for, and it may be also it would be worth the
trial. This was their creed and this the purpose that animated them.
There can be no doubt that through the medium of the old Irish
Republican Brotherhood, which had never quite died out in Ireland,
communications were kept up with the Clan-na-Gael and other extreme
organisations in the United States, and through these avenues also
probably with Germany. Indeed the German Foreign Office, quite early
in the war, at the instigation of Sir Roger Casement had declared
formally "that Germany would not invade Ireland with any intentions of
conquest or of the destruction of any institutions." If they did land
in the course of the war, they would come "inspired by good will
towards a land and a people for whom Germany only wishes national
prosperity and freedom."

The avowedly revolutionary party gained a great accession of strength
when Mr P.H. Pearse and Mr James Connolly composed certain differences
and united the workers in the Citizen Army with the Irish Volunteers.
Mr Pearse was now the leader of the latter organisation--a man of high
intellectual attainments, single-minded purpose, and austere
character. "For many years," writes Mr Henry, "his life seems to have
been passed in the grave shadow of the sacrifice he felt that he was
called upon to make for Ireland. He believed that he was appointed to
tread the path that Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone had trodden before
him, and his life was shaped so that it might be worthy of its end."

Separation as the only road to independence was the burden of Pearse's
teaching. It was his definite purpose to do something which, by the
splendour of the sacrifice involved, would rouse Ireland out of its
national apathy and national stupor. He and his associates believed,
as a writer in _Nationality_ declared: "We have the material, the
men and stuff of war, the faith and purpose and cause for
revolution.... We shall have Ireland illumined with a light before
which even the Martyrs' will pale: the light of Freedom, of a deed
done and action taken and a blow struck for the Old Land." It was in
this faith they went forth to their sacrifice. "On Palm Sunday 1916,"
writes Mr Henry, "the Union of Irish Labour and Irish Nationality was