O'Flaherty V.C. with
an ideal Irish colleen for his sweetheart, and gave him for his mother a
Volumnia of the potato patch rather than a affectionate parent from whom
he could not so easily have torn himself away.

I need hardly say that a play thus carefully adapted to its purpose was
voted utterly inadmissible; and in due course the British Government,
frightened out of its wits for the moment by the rout of the Fifth Army,
ordained Irish Conscription, and then did not dare to go through with
it. I still think my own line was the more businesslike. But during the
war everyone except the soldiers at the front imagined that nothing
but an extreme assertion of our most passionate prejudices, without the
smallest regard to their effect on others, could win the war. Finally
the British blockade won the war; but the wonder is that the British
blockhead did not lose it. I suppose the enemy was no wiser. War is not
a sharpener of wits; and I am afraid I gave great offence by keeping my
head in this matter of Irish recruiting. What can I do but apologize,
and publish the play now that it can no longer do any good?

O'FLAHERTY V.C.

At the door of an Irish country house in a park. Fine, summer weather;
the summer of 1916. The porch, painted white, projects into the drive:
but the door is at the side and the front has a window. The porch faces
east: and the door is in the north side of it. On the south side is a
tree in which a thrush is singing. Under the window is a garden seat
with an iron chair at each end of it.

The last four bars of God Save the King are heard in the distance,
followed by three cheers. Then the band strikes up It's a Long Way to
Tipperary and recedes until it is out of hearing.

Private O'Flaherty V.C. comes wearily southward along the drive, and
falls exhausted into the garden seat. The thrush utters a note of alarm
and flies away. The tramp of a horse is heard.

A GENTLEMAN'S VOICE. Tim! Hi! Tim! [He is heard dismounting.]

A LABORER'S VOICE. Yes, your honor.

THE GENTLEMAN'S VOICE. Take this horse to the stables, will you?

A LABORER'S VOICE. Right, your honor. Yup there. Gwan now. Gwan. [The
horse is led away.]

General Sir Pearce Madigan, an elderly baronet in khaki, beaming with
enthusiasm, arrives. O'Flaherty rises and stands at attention.

SIR PEARCE. No, no, O'Flaherty: none of that now. You're off duty.
Remember that though I am a general of forty years service, that little
Cr