pnotized. We've accepted a Bill which deprives us of the
most elementary rights of freemen. We've licked the boots of English
Liberals. We've said 'thank you' for any gnawed bones they like to
fling to us. We've--"

It struck me that O'Donovan was becoming rhetorical. I interrupted
him.

"Idealism in politics," I said, "is one of the most futile things
there is. What the Nationalist Party--"

"Don't call them that," said O'Donovan. "I tell you they're not
Nationalists."

"I'll call them anything you like," I said, "but until you invent some
other name for them I can't well talk about them without calling them
Nationalists."

"They--" said O'Donovan.

"Very well," I said. "_They._ So long as you know who I mean, the
pronoun will satisfy me. They had to consider not what men like you
wanted, but what the Liberal Party could be induced to give. I don't
say they made the best bargain possible, but--"

"Anyhow," said McNeice, "we're not going to be governed by those
fellows. That's the essential point."

I think it is. The Unionist is not really passionately attached to the
Union. He has no insuperable antipathy to Home Rule. Indeed, I think
most Unionists would welcome any change in our existing system of
government if it were not that they have the most profound and deeply
rooted objection to the men whom McNeice describes as "those fellows,"
and O'Donovan indicates briefly as "they."

"And so," I said, turning to O'Donovan, "in mere despair of
nationality you have gone over to the side of the Unionists."

"I've gone over," said O'Donovan, "to the side of the only people in
Ireland who mean to fight."

Supposing that Ulster really did mean to fight O'Donovan's position
was quite reasonable. But Babberly says it will never come to
fighting. He is quite confident of his ability to bluff the
conscientious Liberal into dropping the Home Rule Bill for fear of
civil war. O'Donovan, and possibly McNeice, will be left out in the
cold if Babberly is right. The matter is rather a tangled one. With
Babberly is Lady Moyne, working at her ingenious policy of dragging a
red herring across the path along which democracy goes towards
socialism. On the other hand there is McNeice with fiery intelligence,
and O'Donovan, a coldly consistent rebel against English rule in any
shape and form. They have their little paper with money enough behind
it, with people like Crossan circulating it for them. It is quite
possible that they