g ready to fight
them!"

"We have tried to conciliate them," Marsh replied. "When Carson formed
his Provisional Government, some of us asked him to extend it to the
whole of Ireland. Do you think we wouldn't rather have Carson than
Redmond? He's got _some_ stuff in him anyhow, but Redmond!..."

He made a gesture of contempt. "I've no use," he said, "for a man who
looks so like Napoleon without being Napoleon!"

"But Carson wouldn't," he went on. "It's all very well to say
'Conciliate Ulster!' but Ulster won't let us conciliate her. The Ulster
people have nothing but contempt for us, and they ram Belfast down our
throats until we're sick of it. And a lot of their prosperity is just
good luck and ... and favour. They've been well looked after by the
English, and they're near everything ... coalfields and Lancashire. Do
you think if Galway was where Belfast is, it wouldn't be as prosperous?
If they're so almighty clever as they say they are, why don't they come
and lead us, instead of clinging on to England like a pampered kid?..."

Henry listened patiently to John. There must, he thought, be some
powerful motive for so much passion. He had come to look upon
nationality as a contemptible thing, a fretful preoccupation with little
affairs, but when he faced the fury of John Marsh, he could not deny
that this passion, whether it be little or big, will bring the world to
broils until it be satisfied. He did not now feel that irritation which
he had formerly felt when John derided the English or called them by
opprobrious names. He could make allowances for the anger of the
dispossessed. "That kind of talk," he thought, "kills itself. Marsh has
only to let himself go along enough, and he'll let himself go
altogether. He'll exhaust his abuse...."

He remembered that when Gilbert and he had arrived in Dublin after their
flight from London, they had tried to discover just what Marsh and his
friends meant to do with Ireland when they had gained control of the
country ... but Marsh and his friends had no plans. They talked vaguely
of the national spirit and of self-government, but they could not be
induced to name a specific reform to which they would set their minds.
Some one had given a copy of Dale's Report of Irish Elementary Education
to Henry, and he had read it with something like horror. It seemed to
him that here was the whole Irish problem, that when this was solved,
everything was solved ... but when he spoke of it