One result of this was that the Dublin Castle authorities did not rearrest me under the Cat and Mouse Act, although I had ignored all the conditions of the license as to reporting my movements to the police, and they did not interfere with my departure to America. They made, however, an unsuccessful attempt, through Sir Horace Plunkett, to exact from me a pledge that I would not speak nor write anything against England in the United States. Another result was that even trials by paid magistrates were found to give too much publicity; accordingly, the next method tried was arbitrary deportation without trial or accusation. This had been adopted, in the form of orders to leave a certain county or district, in many cases besides Hegarty's, but now a wider extension was given to the method. In July four organizers of the Irish Volunteers were ordered by the military authorities to leave Ireland within a week. They refused. The military then had to arrest them and try them; but to avoid undesirable publicity, they charged them with disobeying a military order, the grounds for the issue of such an order not being disclosed. The judicial tools of the castle duly sentenced these four men to three and four months' imprisonment.
Even this has not stopped publicity, for the Redmondite party has been stung into protest against this latest arbitrary action, and has demanded throug Mr. Joseph Devlin, M. P., that these four men get a new and fair trial, and that the grounds for the deportation order be openly stated at that trial.
Meanwhile O'Donovan Rossa, the old Fenian, has been buried in Dublin with a great display of military force by the Irish Volunteers. The funeral oration, pronounced by Mr. Pearse, was a defiant assertion of Ireland's unconquerable resolution to achieve independence. Recruiting for the English army, despite all kinds of pressure and advertising languishes, while the recruiting for the Irish Volunteers is so brisk that the headquarters of that body cannot keep pace with it.
And when peace comes, Ireland, with the other small nations, will stand at the doors of The Hague conference, and will claim her rights from the community of nations. Shall peace bring freedom to Belgium and Poland, perhaps to Finland and Bohemia, and not to Ireland? Must Irish freedom be gained in blood, or will the comity of nations, led by the United States, shame a weakened England into putting into practice at home the principles which are so loudly trumpeted for the benefit of Germany?
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