If in the end it is true he failed to convince his countrymen and failed to carry them with him, this book has told what difficulties were set in his way, not so much by those who desired a different end than his, but by those who desired the same end.  Yet admit that he failed and that he fell from power.  No man holds power for ever, and during seventeen continuous years he held the leadership among his own people with far more than all the personal ascendancy of a Prime Minister in one of the oversea Dominions; and he held it without any of the binding force which control of administration and patronage bestows.  He left his people improved in their material circumstances to an almost incredible degree, as compared with their state when he began his work.

Yet Ireland counts his life a failure, and he most assuredly accepted that view; for he died heartbroken, not for his own sake but for Ireland’s, because he had not won through to the goal.  His action upon the war was his life’s supreme action; he felt this, and knew that it had failed to achieve its end.  By that action let us judge him, for all else is trivial in comparison beside it.

It is said by his critics that he bargained badly.  If reply were made that he believed the Allied cause to be right and desired to lead his country according to his conception of justice, we should be answered that he was in charge of his country’s interests, not of her morals; and he would have admitted an element of truth in this.  Yet, as in the Boer War he had led his countrymen to support what he conceived to be the right cause, even with certain injury to their own, so now assuredly he would not have acted as he did, had he not been convinced that Ireland’s honour was to be served as well as her advantage.

But when there is talk of bargaining, it is well to consider what he had to bargain with.  No one in August 1914 anticipated the course of the war.  No one foresaw the need for the last man available.  It was more than a year before Great Britain could even equip the men who pressed themselves forward for service.  All that he really had in his hand to give or to withhold was the value of Ireland’s moral support.  Could he by waiting his time have made a better bargain?

When that critical hour came, Redmond knew in his, bones the weight of Ireland’s history; he knew all the propensities which would instantly tend to assert themselves, unless their play was checked by a strong counter-emotion.  He knew that if Ireland said nothing and did nothing at the crisis, things would be said of Ireland which would rapidly engender rising passion; and with the growth of that passion all possibility, not of bargaining but of controlling the situation between the two countries would be gone.  In plain language, if he had not acted at once, his only chance for action would have been in heading an Ireland hostile to England.  In this war, with the issue defined as it was from the outset, he could only have done this by denying all that he believed.  But apart from his judgment of the merits, there was his purpose of unity to be served.  Ulster was the difficulty; all other obstacles were disposed of.  How could he hope for an Ulster united to Ireland, if Ulster were divided from Ireland on the war?