, and it is impossible to understand the rebellion
without understanding the man who was a far more important, and will be
a far more lasting, factor in the movement than Sir Roger Casement.

Casement used the magic hope of German help, but it was Connolly who
pointed to the concrete grievances that would make any rebellion welcome
to the workers.

Yet there was nothing of the wild dreamer or the hysterical patriot
about James Connolly, the Ulster organizer of the Transport Union, much
less anything of the hooligan.

His proper place should have been within the ranks of the Parliamentary
Party, like so many of the other leaders, especially the Sinn Feiners;
and it is a very significant fact that, in spite of their national
claims, two of the greatest economic movements Ireland has seen since
Parnell should have failed to be assimilated by the politicians--but it
reflects as much upon one as the other.

Probably when he wrote his last work, a pamphlet entitled "The
Reconquest of Ireland," which was printed at Liberty Hall early in 1915,
he had no idea that it would mean anything more than an upward economic
struggle of the submerged classes.

"The Labour Movement of Ireland," he wrote, "must set itself the
Reconquest of Ireland as its final aim," and by the word "reconquest" of
Ireland he means "the taking possession of the entire country, all its
powers of wealth, production, and its natural resources, and organizing
these on a co-operative basis for the good of all."

It is significant that there is no religious or political bigotry: the
movement is right outside both Carsonism and Redmondism, as indeed their
new flag, with its significant colours--green, white, and
orange--symbolizes; and he repeats the hope of the United Irishmen at
the end of the eighteenth century, "that our animosities were buried
with the bones of our ancestors and that we could unite as citizens and
claim the rights of man"--the first of which is to be able to live
freely, that is, with the means of life no longer the property of a
class.

He had, in fact, realized "that the old lines of political demarcation
no longer served to express any reality in the lives of the people." If
anything, the new movement was antagonistic to them all, for in the
summing-up he had observed: "In the great Dublin lock-out of 1913-14,
the manner in which the Dublin employers, overwhelmingly Unionist,
received the enthusiastic and unscrupulous support of the