“As to Ireland all foreign sympathy is over owing to the late cowardice and poltroonery of the patriots. Even Italians can fight” (Letter of C. Lever from Florence, August 19th, 1848).

It is only the truth that wounds.  It is that reproach that has cursed Ireland for a century.

Sedition, the natural garment for an Irishman to wear, has been for a hundred years a bloodless sedition.  It is this fiery shirt of Nessus that has driven our strong men mad.  How to shed our blood with honour, how to give our lives for Ireland—­that has been, that is the problem of Irish nationality.

Chapter VII

THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS

It would be idle to attempt to forecast the details of a struggle between Great Britain and Germany.  That is a task that belongs to the War Department of the two States.  I have assigned myself merely to point out that such a struggle is inevitable, and to indicate what I believe to be the supreme factors in the conflict, and how one of these, Ireland, and that undoubtedly the most important factor, has been overlooked by practically every predecessor of Germany in the effort to make good at sea.  The Spaniards in Elizabeth’s reign, the French of Louis XIV and of the Directory took some steps, it is true, to challenge England’s control of Ireland, but instead of concentrating their strength upon that line of attack they were content to dissipate it upon isolated expeditions and never once to push home the assault on the one point that was obviously the key to the enemy’s whole position.  At any period during that last three centuries, with Ireland gone, England was, if not actually at the mercy of her assailants, certainly reduced to impotency beyond her own shores.  But while England knew the value to herself of Ireland, she appreciated to the full the fact that this profitable juxtaposition lay on her right side hidden from the eyes of Europe.

“Will anyone assert,” said Gladstone, “that we would have dared to treat Ireland as we have done had she lain, not between us and the ocean, but between us and the continent?” And while the bulk of England, swollen to enormous dimensions by the gains she drew from Ireland interposed between her victim and Europe, her continental adversaries were themselves the victims of that strange mental disease psychologists term the collective illusion.  All the world saw that which in fact did not exist.  The greatness of England as they beheld it, imposing, powerful, and triumphant, existed not on the rocky base they believed they saw, but on the object, sacked, impoverished, and bled, they never saw.  And so it is to-day.  The British Empire is the great illusion.  Resembling in much the Holy Roman Empire it is not British, it is not an Empire, and assuredly it is not holy.  It lives on the life-blood and sufferings of some, on the suffrance and mutual jealousy of others, and on the fixed illusion of all.  Rather