Page:Schüller - Jim Connolly and Irish Freedom (1926).djvu/9

 pendence of the labor movement. He consistently pointed out that Irish labor was always betrayed in the past when it allowed itself to be made the tool of the bourgeois class who always sold out to the foreign enemy at the first opportunity.

When the world war broke out Connolly like other revolutionists expected that the social democratic leaders would raise the standard of revolt. He gave vent to his disappointment in language that burns and sears. He excoriated the social patriots and spurious pacifists with voice and pen. He said that the declaration of war by the capitalists should be the signal for civil war on the part of the European working class, that the workers should raise the banner of revolution when the "first note from the bugle of war rang out upon their ears". Instead the traitorous leaders "who pledged the life long love of comrades in the international army of labor" because the hangmen and murderers of the working class and the bullets that snuffed out the life of James Connolly were fired by guns directed by a British cabinet in which sat a member of the Second International, the Honorable Arthur Henderson.

When Connolly bid bood bye to his comrades in the union headquarters as he was leaving for his last fight he said to one of them with a smile on his lip and that laughing glint in his eye: "We are going out to get slaughtered. Stay with the union. It needs you."

When the gallant little army of rebels surrendered, neither Connolly nor his comrades asked for quarter. They insisted that their followers be exempted from the death penalty. The promise was made only to be broken, in harmony with Britain's record thru Irish history. Connolly was carried on a stretcher to the place of execution, propped up against a wall and murdered. The British knew what they were doing when they murdered James Connolly but they paid thru the nose for it since then and the debt is still unpaid.

In Connolly's death the Irish labor movement lost its