It is possibly true that before any movement can attain to really national proportions there must be, as well as the intellectual ideal which gives it utterance and a frame, a sense of economic misfortune to give it weight, and when these fuse the combination may well be irresistible.  The organised labour discontent in Ireland, in Dublin, was not considerable enough to impose its aims or its colours on the Volunteers, and it is the labour ideal which merges and disappears in the national one.  The reputation of all the leaders of the insurrection, not excepting Connolly, is that they were intensely patriotic Irishmen, and also, but this time with the exception of Connolly, that they were not particularly interested in the problems of labour.

The great strike of two years ago remained undoubtedly as a bitter and lasting memory with Dublin labour—­perhaps, even, it was not so much a memory as a hatred.  Still, it was not hatred of England which was evoked at that time, nor can the stress of their conflict be traced to an English source.  It was hatred of local traders, and, particularly, hatred of the local police, and the local powers and tribunals, which were arrayed against them.

One can without trouble discover reasons why they should go on strike again, but by no reasoning can I understand why they should go into rebellion against England, unless it was that they were patriots first and trade unionists a very long way afterwards.

I do not believe that this combination of the ideal and the practical was consummated in the Dublin insurrection, but I do believe that the first step towards the formation of such a party has now been taken, and that if, years hence, there should be further trouble in Ireland such trouble will not be so easily dealt with as this one has been.

It may be that further trouble will not arise, for the co-operative movement, which is growing slowly but steadily in Ireland, may arrange our economic question, and, incidentally, our national question also—­that is if the English people do not decide that the latter ought to be settled at once.

James Connolly had his heart in both the national and the economic camp, but he was a great-hearted man, and could afford to extend his affections where others could only dissipate them.

There can be no doubt that his powers of orderly thinking were of great service to the Volunteers, for while Mr. Larkin was the magnetic centre of the Irish labour movement, Connolly was its brains.  He has been sentenced to death for his part in the insurrection, and for two days now he has been dead.

He had been severely wounded in the fighting, and was tended, one does not doubt with great care, until he regained enough strength to stand up and be shot down again.

Others are dead also.  I was not acquainted with them, and with Connolly I was not more than acquainted.  I had met him twice many months ago, but other people were present each time, and he scarcely uttered a word on either of these occasions.  I was told that he was by nature silent.  He was a man who can be ill-spared in Ireland, but labour, throughout the world, may mourn for him also.