Page:Roger Casement - The crime against Ireland and how the war may right it.djvu/88

 82 Parliament in Westminister, ''doing everything in our power to increase the strength and the glory of what will then be our Empire at long last; and by sending in support of the Empire the strong arms and brace hearts of Irish soldiers and Irish sailors, to maintain the tradition of Irish valor in every part of the world. That is our ambition.''"

Were this, indeed, the ambition of Ireland, did this represent the true feeling of Irishmen towards England, and the Empire of England, then Home Rule, on such terms, would be a curse and a crime. Thierry, the French historian, is a truer exponent of the passionate aspirations of the Irish heart than anyone who to-day would seek to represent Ireland as willing to sell her soul no less than the strong arms and brave hearts of her sons in an unholy cause.

"* * * for notwithstanding the mixture of races, the inter-communion of every kind brought about by the course of centuries, hatred of the English Government still subsists as a native passion in the mass of the Irish nation. Ever since the hour of invasion this race of men has invariably desired that which their conquerors did not desire, detested that which they liked, and liked that which they detested * * *. This indomitable persistency, this faculty of preserving through centuries of misery the remembrance of lost liberty, and of never despairing of a cause always defeated, always fatal to those who dared to defend it, is perhaps the strangest and noblest example ever given by any nation." (Histoire de la Conquete de l' Angleterre par les Normands, Paris edition, 1846, London, 1891.)

The French writer here saw deeper and spoke truer than many who seek to-day not to reveal the Irish heart, whose deep purpose they have forgotten, but to barter its life-blood for a concession that could be won to-morrow by half that blood if shed at home, thus offered without