ar to me
that the Bill which we support to-day will be for the good of Ireland
and that we shall be stronger with it than without it. I am not
accepting the Bill in advance. We may have to refuse it. We are here
only to say that the voice of Ireland must be listened to henceforward.
Let us unite and win a good Act from the British; I think it can be
done. But if we are tricked this time, there is a party in Ireland, and
I am one of them, that will advise the Gael to have no counsel or
dealings with the Gall [the foreigner] for ever again, but to answer
them henceforward with the strong hand and the sword's edge. Let the
Gall understand that if we are cheated once more there will be red war
in Ireland."

The platform where Pearse spoke was set up within a stone's throw of the
General Post Office in which, four years later, he was to give effect to
the words he spoke then and to earn his own death in undoing the work of
Redmond's lifetime. At that moment no one heeded his utterance, nor the
speech, also in Irish, of Professor John MacNeill from another platform,
which went, as its speaker was destined to go, half the way with Pearse.

But Redmond never attempted to conceal the existence of this element in
Ireland. Speaking on the introduction of the Home Rule Bill on April
11th, he dealt at the very opening with the charge that the Irish people
wanted separation and that the Irish leaders were separatists in
disguise:

"I will be perfectly frank on this matter. There always has been, and
there is to-day, a certain section of Irishmen who would like to see
separation from this country. They are a small, a very small section.
They were once a very large section. They are a very small section, but
the men who hold, these views at this moment only desire separation as
an alternative to the present system, and if you change the present
system and give into the hands of Irishmen the management of purely
Irish affairs, even that small feeling in favour of separation will
disappear; and if it survives at all, I would like to know how under
those circumstances it could be stronger or more powerful for mischief
than at the present moment."

Sincerer words were never spoken, nor, I think, a better justified
forecast. Where Redmond and all of us were wrong was that we
underestimated the possibility of accomplishing what Pearse ultimately
accomplished, even when assisted by the widespread disillusionment and
sense of betrayal whi