Page:Roger Casement - The crime against Ireland and how the war may right it.djvu/76

 70 Louis XIV and Napoleon planned but failed to achieve, a German Empire at war with England cannot be misdirected as they were. The contention of Ireland so often put before those monarchs, that England, to be beaten, must be driven out of Ireland, will not be laid in vain before the greater brains and mightier purpose that control the vaster armaments of Germany.

Maurice Fitzgerald, the outlawed claimant to the Earldom of Desmond, wrote to Phillip II from Lisbon on September 4th, 1593:

"We have thought it right to implore your Majesty to send the aid you will think fit and with it to send us (the Irish refuges in the Peninsula) to defend and uphold the same undertaking; for we hope, with God's help, your Majesty will be victorious and conquer and hold as your own the Kingdom of Ireland * * * We trust in God that Your Majesty and the Council will weigh well the advantages that will ensue to Christendom from this enterprise * * * since the opportunity is so good and the cause so just and weighty, and the undertaking so easily completed."

The task was easy of accomplishment in Tudor days; to-day it will be the first test of Imperial sovereignty in Europe; a task that will tax the greatness of a great people, the genius of their statesmanship, the intelligence of their ruler, but one that will infinitely repay the labor of accomplishment.

The task of Ireland is to prepare for the coming of the German. No people can expect freedom except through sacrifice. Our young men and women, our boys and girls, must be taught the part Germany is destined to play in the affairs of the world, and must be trained to know their duty when the day of trial comes. The history of human freedom is written in letters of blood. It is the law of God. No people who clutch at safety, who shun death are