Of these, the Citizen Army or Labour side of the Volunteers, would not number more than one thousand men, and it is with difficulty such a figure could be arrived at.  Yet it is freely argued, and the theory will grow, that the causes of this latest insurrection should be sought among the labour problems of Dublin rather than in any national or patriotic sentiment, and this theory is buttressed by all the agile facts which such a theory would be furnished with.

It is an interesting view, but in my opinion it is an erroneous one.

That Dublin labour was in the Volunteer movement to the strength of, perhaps, two hundred men, may be true—­it is possible there were more, but it is unlikely that a greater number, or, as many, of the Citizen Army marched when the order came.  The overwhelming bulk of Volunteers were actuated by the patriotic ideal which is the heritage and the burden of almost every Irishman born out of the Unionist circle, and their connection with labour was much more manual than mental.

This view of the importance of labour to the Volunteers is held by two distinct and opposed classes.

Just as there are some who find the explanation of life in a sexual formula, so there is a class to whom the economic idea is very dear, and beneath every human activity they will discover the shock of wages and profit.  It is truly there, but it pulls no more than its weight, and in Irish life the part played by labour has not yet been a weighty one; although on every view it is an important one.  The labour idea in Ireland has not arrived.  It is in process of “becoming,” and when labour problems are mentioned in this country a party does not come to the mind, but two men only—­they are Mr. Larkin and James Connolly, and they are each in their way exceptional and curious men.

There is another class who implicate labour, and they do so because it enables them to urge that as well as being grasping and nihilistic, Irish labour is disloyal and treacherous.

The truth is that labour in Ireland has not yet succeeded in organising anything—­not even discontent.  It is not self-conscious to any extent, and, outside of Dublin, it scarcely appears to exist.  The national imagination is not free to deal with any other subject than that of freedom, and part of the policy of our “masters” is to see that we be kept busy with politics instead of social ideas.  From their standpoint the policy is admirable, and up to the present it has thoroughly succeeded.

One does not hear from the lips of the Irish workingman, even in Dublin, any of the affirmations and rejections which have long since become the commonplaces of his comrades in other lands.  But on the subject of Irish freedom his views are instantly forthcoming, and his desires are explicit, and, to a degree, informed.  This latter subject they understand and have fabricated an entire language to express it, but the other they do not understand nor cherish, and they are not prepared to die for it.