It was hard enough that our men in the English armies should be slain for causes which no amount of explanation will ever render less foreign to us, or even intelligible; but that our men who were left should be killed in Ireland fighting against the same England that their brothers are fighting for ties the question into such knots of contradiction as we may give up trying to unravel.  We can only think—­this has happened—­and let it unhappen itself as best it may.

We say that the time always finds the man, and by it we mean:  that when a responsibility is toward there will be found some shoulder to bend for the yoke which all others shrink from.  It is not always nor often the great ones of the earth who undertake these burdens—­it is usually the good folk, that gentle hierarchy who swear allegiance to mournfulness and the under dog, as others dedicate themselves to mutton chops and the easy nymph.  It is not my intention to idealise any of the men who were concerned in this rebellion.  Their country will, some few years hence, do that as adequately as she has done it for those who went before them.

Those of the leaders whom I knew were not great men, nor brilliant—­that is they were more scholars than thinkers, and more thinkers than men of action; and I believe that in no capacity could they have attained to what is called eminence, nor do I consider they coveted any such public distinction as is noted in that word.

But in my definition they were good men—­men, that is, who willed no evil, and whose movements of body or brain were unselfish and healthy.  No person living is the worse off for having known Thomas MacDonagh, and I, at least, have never heard MacDonagh speak unkindly or even harshly of anything that lived.  It has been said of him that his lyrics were epical; in a measure it is true, and it is true in the same measure that his death was epical.  He was the first of the leaders who was tried and shot.  It was not easy for him to die leaving behind two young children and a young wife, and the thought that his last moment must have been tormented by their memory is very painful.  We are all fatalists when we strike against power, and I hope he put care from him as the soldiers marched him out.

The O’Rahilly also I knew, but not intimately, and I can only speak of a good humour, a courtesy, and an energy that never failed.  He was a man of unceasing ideas and unceasing speech, and laughter accompanied every sound made by his lips.

Plunkett and Pearse I knew also, but not intimately.  Young Plunkett, as he was always called, would never strike one as a militant person.  He, like Pearse and MacDonagh, wrote verse, and it was no better nor worse than their’s were.  He had an appetite for quaint and difficult knowledge.  He studied Egyptian and Sanscrit, and distant curious matter of that sort, and was interested in inventions and the theatre.  He was tried and sentenced and shot.