Page:Schüller - Jim Connolly and Irish Freedom (1926).djvu/27

 ture are shrivelled up on the funeral pyre of the last war lord."

This brings us to the Easter of 1916, the first upheaval in Ireland.

Irish bourgeois nationalists and British Socialists sought and seek still in vain for an explanation of Connolly's leadership of the Easter rising. Much as these latter sympathized with Connolly as a labor leader and Socialist they could not understand how he could take part in such an act and thus we see the strangest endeavors to explain, or rather to excuse Connolly's attitude during the Red Easter of 1916. It is no small wonder that the Irish rising was either rejected toy the British Labor movement, or in the most favorable instance was received with a lack of general understanding.

Some attributed Connolly's attitude to the influence of his comrade, Pearce, the Republican, who is said to have believed in a mystic manner that every generation of Ireland must offer up a blood sacrifice! The others explained the rising as a result of Connolly's depression and despair caused by the war and the position of Ireland. His decision was also attributed to the fact of his bitter sorrow at the breakdown of the Socialist International and his mental rejection of the mutual slaughter of the workers of all countries, which impelled him to deal a blow, no matter how few people he could win to his side.

Others explained the rising as a demonstration of the wish to show that Ireland was not loyal and did not relinquish her demands.

Others again simply declared the rising was a "Putsch."

Of course, all these explanations are so much nonsense: meant to excuse Connolly, they accuse their originators by showing that they are at loggerheads with the principles of revolutionary struggle, or that they