Page:Schüller - Jim Connolly and Irish Freedom (1926).djvu/25

 ties. As was worthy of a revolutionary, he occupied himself seriously with the political, tactical, and military questions of a rising in Ireland. He understood very well the Leninist conception that a rising is an "art" which has got to he "studied."

During the war his journal. "The Workers' Republic," gave the place of honor to studies about risings, street fights in Moscow in 1905, Paris in 1830 and in 1848. the rising in the Tyrol in 1905. and guerilla warfare in India, revolutionary struggles in Mexico, and similar happenings. At a meeting of the officers of the revolutionary Irish Volunteer Army. Connolly was asked during his lecture on street fights how it happened that he understood so much about revolutionary and military questions. He smilingly replied "You forget that revolution is my business." (Ryan, "J. Connolly.")

It is very worthy of note that Connolly grasped the conception of the Soviet idea. Daniel De Leon influenced him very much in this, he had worked jointly with him in America. Just as he, so too did Connolly declare that the future government and the future division of the country would be based not on territory but on production and its component parts and branches.

It is a platitude to state that Connolly as a revolutionary fighter against imperialism was also an ardent fighter against the last imperialist war. The breakdown of the Socialist International oppressed him greatly. To this was added the complete treachery of the Irish bourgeois and petty bourgeois Nationalists. The former, the Home Rulers, under Redmond's leadership, went over completely to the camp of the British Imperialists; the latter, weak and vacillating, expected to get all assistance from the Germans. From the very beginning Connolly was quite clear that only by a rising of the workers could the war be put a stop to, and also that such a great revolutionary rising would take place. On August