are to any
other race. The necessary preliminary to political adjustment is moral
adjustment, forgiveness, and mutual understanding. I have been in
council with others of my countrymen for several months, and I noticed
what an obstacle it was to agreement how few, how very few, there were
who had been on terms of friendly intimacy with men of all parties.
There was hardly one who could have given an impartial account of the
ideals and principles of his opponents. Our political differences have
brought about social isolations, and there can be no understanding where
there is no eagerness to meet those who differ from us, and hear the
best they have to say for themselves. This letter is an appeal to
Irishmen to seek out and understand their political opponents. If they
come to know each other, they will come to trust each other, and will
realize their kinship, and will set their faces to the future together,
to build up a civilization which will justify their nationality.

I myself am Anglo-Irish, with the blood of both races in me, and when
the rising of Easter Week took place all that was Irish in me was
profoundly stirred, and out of that mood I wrote commemorating the dead.
And then later there rose in memory the faces of others I knew who
loved their country, but had died in other battles. They fought in those
because they believed they would serve Ireland, and I felt these were
no less my people. I could hold them also in my heart and pay tribute
to them. Because it was possible for me to do so, I think it is possible
for others; and in the hope that the deeds of all may in the future be
a matter of pride to the new nation I append here these verses I have
written:--

To the Memory of Some I knew Who are Dead and Who Loved Ireland.

Their dream had left me numb and cold,
But yet my spirit rose in pride,
Refashioning in burnished gold
The images of those who died,
Or were shut in the penal cell.
Here's to you, Pearse, your dream not mine,
But yet the thought, for this you fell,
Has turned life's water into wine.

You who have died on Eastern hills
Or fields of France as undismayed,
Who lit with interlinked wills
The long heroic barricade,
You, too, in all the dreams you had,
Thought of some thing for Ireland done.
Was it not so, Oh, shining lad,
What lured you, Alan Anderson?

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