look to the United States particularly to help us in this matter. The question of Ireland is not, as suggested by England, "A domestic matter." It is an international one, just as the case of Belgium, Serbia and other small nationalities is. We want our case to come up at the Peace Conference, if not before—to the international tribunal for settlement.
The United States Government has declared that it is entering this war for the democratization of Europe. We do not want democracy to stop short of the Irish sea, but to begin there. If Great Britain is in good faith in this matter, she can begin now, by freeing our small nation, and this can be done without the shedding of a single drop of American blood, and the whole world would applaud the deed.
We look, therefore, to America to see that her allies live up to their professions and that the end of the war will see all small nations of Europe free. As my husband said, in an article in the Century Magazine, February, 1916, on a "Forgotten Small Nationality," "Shall peace bring freedom to Belgium, to Poland, perhaps to Finland and Bohemia, and not to Ireland?" It is for America to see that Ireland is not excluded from the blessings of true democracy and freedom. In this respect America will be but paying back the debt she owes to Ireland. In the day of her struggle for independence, before she set up her republic, she was aided by Irish citizens—many of whom gave their lives for her freedom. And in the Civil War thousands of Irishmen died that your negroes might be free men. The record of the Fighting 69th of New York is famous in your history; it was a regiment of Roman Catholic Irish who were wiped out so that the regiment disappeared for a time till it could be practically recruited entirely afresh, and to-day it Is allowed to keep its name of (the 69 N. Y. N. G.) in parenthesis after the new name given it in drafting it into the Federal army for service in France, the 165th Infantry of the N. Y. National Guard Army. It is for their descendants, the beneficiaries of those old wars of yours for freedom in '76 and 1861, now to pay back that debt, and to help us set up an Irish republic, as independent of Great Britain as is your own.
At the end of the war we hope to see a "United Europe" on the model of your own United States, where each state is free and inde-
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