“Our house is just a little island of Sinn Fein in this district.  The neighbors knew my husband had been arrested.  The papers told them that the arrests had been made in connection with that Jules Verne German submarine plot.  But when my baby was born, my neighbors forgot everything but the fact that I was a human being who needed help.  One neighbor came in to bake my bread; another to sweep my house; another to cook my meals.  They were very good.

“Often at five o’clock, I watch the girls coming home from the mills.  At six o’clock they eat supper.  At seven the boys and girls walk out together, two by two.”  Mrs. McCullough laughed.  “You know, I think that’s all I have against the Ulsterites—­there’s nothing queer about them.”

By the grate, Dennis McCullough held the baby in his arms with all the care one uses towards a treasure long withheld.  His drawn white face was close to the dimpled cheeks.

The rank and file of the Belfastians, then, are joining the priests, co-operationists, labor unionists and Sinn Feiners in their fight for self-determination.  For it is believed that as long as the Irish people, Irish or Scotch-Irish, remain under the domination of England, they will continue to suffer under exploitation by her capitalists.  And the people of the north and the south are unanimous that English exploitation is what’s the matter with Ireland.

[Footnote 1:  Census of 1911.]

[Footnote 2:  England passed an order in 1919 regulating the wages of sweated women workers so that the minimum wage of a girl 18 working a 48-hour week amounts to $6.72.  But the order concludes:  “This order shall have effect in all districts of Great Britain but not in Ireland.” (Ministry of Labor.  Statutory Rules and Orders. 1919.  No. 357.)]

[Footnote 3:  “Report Chief Medical Inspector, Belfast, 1909.”]

[Footnote 4:  Belfast Telegraph, May 15, 1919.]

[Footnote 5:  Northern Whig, Belfast, May 17, 1919.]

[Footnote 6:  Ibid.]

[Footnote 7:  Belfast Telegraph, May 15, 1919.]