be eliminated. We are
a new people, and not the past, but the future, is to justify this new
nationality.

I believe it was this powerful Irish character which stirred in Ulster
before the war, leading it to adopt methods unlike the Anglo-Saxon
tradition in politics. I believe that new character, far more than the
spirit of the ancient race, was the ferment in the blood of those who
brought about the astonishing enterprise of Easter Week. Pearse himself,
for all his Gaelic culture, was sired by one of the race he fought
against. He might stand in that respect as a symbol of the new race
which is springing up. We are slowly realizing the vigor of the modern
Irish character just becoming self-conscious of itself. I had met many
men who were in the enterprise of Easter Week and listened to their
spirit their speech, but they had to prove to myself and others by more
than words. I listened with that half-cynical feeling which is customary
with us when men advocate a cause with which we are temperamentally
sympathetic, but about whose realization we are hopeless. I could not
gauge the strength of the new spirit, for words do not by themselves
convey the quality of power in men; and even when the reverberations
from Easter Week were echoing everywhere in Ireland, for a time I,
and many others, thought and felt about those who died as some pagan
concourse in ancient Italy might have felt looking down upon an arena,
seeing below a foam of glorious faces turned to them, the noble,
undismayed, inflexible faces of martyrs, and, without understanding,
have realized that this spirit was stronger than death. I believe that
capacity for sacrifice, that devotion to ideals exists equally among the
opponents of these men. It would have been proved in Ireland, in Ulster,
if the need had arisen. It has been proved on many a battlefield of
Europe. Whatever views we may hold about the relative value of national
or Imperial ideals, we may recognize that there is moral equality where
the sacrifice is equal. No one has more to give than life, and, when
that is given, neither Nationalist nor Imperialist in Ireland can claim
moral superiority for the dead champions of their causes.

And here I come to the purpose of my letter, which is to deprecate the
scornful repudiation by Irishmen of other Irishmen, which is so common
at present, and which helps to perpetuate our feuds. We are all one
people. We are closer to each other in character than we