MAUNSEL & COMPANY, LIMITED DUBLIN AND LONDON. 1918 As passed by Censor Printed by George Roberts, Dublin Irish Paper...

In this age of sacred egoisms and oppressed nationalities the drama—or melodrama—of international politics has been enriched by a variety of distressed heroines, in the shape of small nations, whose salvation has inspired professions of altruism slightly incompatible with the previous records of the rescuers as revealed to the impartial observer. The shortage of paper and man-power notwithstanding, the printing presses of the Latin and Anglo-Saxon worlds have poured forth an undiminished stream

In this most intellectually belligerent of neutral countries the political mind has become realistic and critical, just when the combatant nations have taken refuge in an uncritical and remote idealism from the sordid and dreadful realities of war. Amongst the belligerents, it is true, there is talk of imposing ideals which, if ill-defined, have nevertheless called forth generous sacrifices from the inarticulate, plain people, who accept the formulæ officially or officiously provided for their g

The prevalence of the illusion of British liberty has been an obstacle to the understanding of Ireland’s problem for many years, and correspondingly the Sinn Féin foreign policy is not a recent phenomenon, since its objective has been the same for centuries as it is to-day. The French critic, Emile Montégut, writing in 1855 of Mitchel’s Jail Journal , admitted the difficulty when he said: “If the oppressor of Ireland were Austria or Russia, no invective, no anger, would suffice to denounce the i