I am now merely concerned with the causes of a present situation. For it was during these months that Ireland saw her villages and factories burned by her invaders, and her roads cut and her railroads destroyed by her defenders. Sights so seen are not easily forgotten. Practices so learned are not easily uprooted.

Even in the most fortunate of circumstances, the fruits of such a war must surely have been gathered, whatever its outcome. It is a stern truth that men cannot sow darnel and harvest wheat. But in the meantime other causes were being created, though not in every case at our own will, the effects of which may now be

seen.

III

For this last phase of our age-old war lasted from 1919 to 1921, and succeeded to the Great European War, of which it, in its turn, gathered the fruits. Of these, the most pregnant of consequences, in the outcome, was not that which, at the time, seemed to be significant. This was the effectual stemming of the stream of emigration.

For seventy years Ireland's most important, and most pitiful, form of export was of the youth to which all other nations look for the hope of their future. During the early part of that period that terrible emigration drained the country almost to death. In 1846 the population stood at 8,287,000. By 1913 it might normally have been expected to reach not less than 17,000,000; instead of which it fell to 4,379,000. These figures eloquently exhibit the nature of the injury done to the country. Yet this terrible result meant a further injury, not less deep. It meant that the nation ceased to expect to employ its youth. It is true, indeed, that during the latter part of these years, and especially during the new century as a consequence of Land Purchase, this outward stream dwindled. The figures fell to a comparatively low point by contrast with previous years. But the stream continued. The figures were still heavy, and out of all proportion to the experience of other nations. The evil habit, once established, continued. And it continued just where its consequences were of the worst. The middle-aged ceased

to go, as they once had gone; but the younger sons, and the daughters, went, and the country ceased to expect to find them employment.

I put the case thus broadly. It is immaterial to my present argument whether they went because there was no employment, or whether there was no employment because they had formed the habit of going. The truth is, perhaps, a medley of both factors. Enough that they went, and that, had they remained, they would have swelled the ranks of the idle.

During the European War, however, emigration was forbidden, and Irish emigrants at Liverpool were turned back. There was no Irish person of right feeling who did not regard this with joy, in spite of the suffering it may have caused at the time, and in spite of the indignation with which the unseemly scenes at the Liverpool quays were regarded during those weeks in 1915. For it meant that the fateful habit of many years was now rudely broken, and, having once been broken, that it would not be so easily resumed. But it meant also that Irish youth, at a most critical and impressionable time of life, would accumulate in idleness like waters in a land-locked lake, without being able to discharge itself into active streams of productive employment. Here, too, history, that in other countries helps to smoothen difficulties, in Ireland hindered. Between 1915 and 1919, out of a population of rather over four and a quarter millions, about thirty thousand young men had accumulated, for many of whom there was no land, and no industries to absorb them into towns and cities, the few industries that existed being charged to the full. History had frustrated an industrial development in Ireland, and now when such a development was most needed, there were no channels to relieve a growing pressure that, whatever happened, could not but prove a menace to future peace.

From one point of view, of which I have good cause not to be unmindful, this was a fortunate outcome. Without that growing pressure it is doubtful whether the last stage of the war for independence could have been brought to success. None who took part in the political elections that laid the basis of that independence, in 1917 and 1918, but must remember with a thrill of pride

how the enthusiasm and energy of youth transfigured the situation. They made a new thing of elections. Instead of being, as till then they had been, matters of political craft, they became the emblazoning of a brave and beautiful banner. Youth became the emblem of an awakened nation, and sober age was enkindled by the new spirit, and sang the new songs of youth in street and road. Till then, workers in political elections had been paid for their labour; but now youth rushed into the field, asking only to serve the national cause. Nothing could withstand the new tide that ran in the country, and carried to final success the General Election of December, 1918, the consequence of which was the Declaration of Independence of January of the following year.

Beneath this bravery, however, the menace of the future ran, as it could not, under the circumstances, help but run. And now menace was to be added to menace, also inevitable in the circumstances. For the Declaration of Independence was a challenge by which it was necessary to stand. It required no mighty acumen to perceive that it was a gage of war. Being accepted as such by the British Government, which sent to Ireland part of the armies now no longer needed on the Continent, who were better qualified to defend it than the new legions of youth by whose abundant service it had been made? Therefore arms were gathered into the country. The Irish Republican Army was placed on a war footing. And during three years of gathering fury and intensity guerrilla warfare was waged up and down the country, in laneways and highways, on mountains and throughout the countryside, till an armistice was called in the midsummer of 1921.

IV

Thus, when that Armistice was called, there were some thousands of young men, many of them little more than boys, in the country, between the receptive years of 17 to 22, who had never been employed, had never worked, were all armed, were all accustomed to fend for themselves, and to act for themselves, on their own initiative in little bands and companies, all quick and ready shots, taking what they could get where they could get it,

bidding tomorrow care for itself and its concerns, and regarding danger lightly. Not all of them had fought consistently in the late war. Indeed, the active "flying columns" had at no time embraced more than a few thousand. But they were all armed and they were all idle, and they were all accustomed to scenes of fire, fury, and destruction. The bravest and the carefullest, the stoutest and the canniest, were alike in this, that they were armed, that they had not worked at any trade, and that there was practically no employment for which they could look.

During the Armistice, when immediate danger was past, and the green uniform was seen on the streets without risk, and active recruiting and reorganization was undertaken with a view to the possible renewal of hostilities, many more of this idle youth (including thousands who had steered a careful course when danger was about) were enrolled and armed. These, in the nature of things, included some of the worst, and certainly the most restless, elements in the country; and added to the menace that already existed a peril of the gravest kind. Their past records proved that no high motives had allured them, and testified to the assurance of grave troubles in the future, whatever the outcome of the negotiations that were then proceeding in London. Thus, when in the autumn of 1921 the Irish Plenipotentiaries went to London, a considerable armed force was being organized in Ireland, comprised of young men who were neither angels nor devils but (like the rest of humankind) with infinite capacities in both directions. The backbone of that army had fought a terrible war, with an unselfish heroism and simple devotion the like of which it would be difficult to parallel. For years, for example, orders were that when a man was caught he was not to recognize the court since it was an alien institution planted in Ireland in defiance of the people's will. During these years it was a weekly occurrence, therefore, to see young men brought to trial who could never have been proved guilty by laws of evidence had they been impleaded; and who went cheerfully to heavy terms of imprisonment rather than recognize the British courts. Such men could have been lifted almost to any height of discipline and self-sacrifice. But they were all gunmen, imbued with gun-ethics; and there was no employment for them. They were

encompassed by no sure economic bulwark; and, for many of them, the revolver was the ultimate assurance of the morrow's meal. They could therefore have fallen to almost any depth of indiscipline and spoliation.

All lay with their leaders. Had those leaders, in the difficult transition from one period to another, remained united, this trained and disciplined youth might have been turned to enormous good, and the country have been saved from the peril created by the existence of such a force. For the majority of these young men and young women, for both had fought together, and dared the same dangers-had defended the Republic proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence, but had had no very clear conception of what was meant by the word Republic. If all their leaders had unitedly accepted the Treaty brought back from London by the nation's Plenipotentiaries, as all those leaders were severally and unitedly responsible for the surrender of the Republic in the face of circumstances, the armed youth of the nation would have stood by that result; and constructive development of the country's resources could have been begun without delay for the creation of industries and employment. But when the leaders broke asunder in bitter recrimination, when a long weary debate, interspersed by unseemly wrangles and bandying of harsh epithets, dragged itself from day to day into weeks, the rank and file slipped from the heights of idealism to which they so often have been lifted, and to which they could always again have been lifted, and fell into the depths of violence, and desperate carelessness, and, ultimately, criminality, which had always been the fearful alternative awaiting them.

So far I have carefully refrained from distributing blame, in an attempt to explain events by their terrible causes. But now I enter on a period in which censure cannot be silent. For those who denounced the Treaty, and resisted the solution it offered, turned to this armed youth, and deliberately awakened its worst propensities. Young men and young women, who could have been lifted to great purposes, were exhorted to save the Republic by destroying the nation without which no State at all was possible. Young men, armed and without employment, were instructed, tacitly or overtly, and in the name of high ideals and