Page:The ways of war - Kettle - 1917.pdf/25

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whose valour and noble disinterestedness he honoured, but whose ideals he most emphatically did not share.

Mr. Leslie is in shining contrast to Mr. Colum in sympathetic understanding: "Irishmen will think of him with his gentle brother-in-law, Sheehy-Skeffington, as two intellectuals who, after their manner and their light, wrought and thought and died for Ireland. What boots it if one was murdered by a British officer and the other was slain in honourable war by Germans? To Ireland, they are both lovable, and in the Irish mind, their memory shall not fail.... Ireland knows that they were both men of peace and that they both offered their lives for her. England can claim neither. In death, they are divided, but in the heart of Ireland they are one."

In The Day's Burden, my husband referred to Ireland as "the spectre at the Banquet of the Empire." He died that Ireland might not be the spectre at the Peace Conference of Nations.

His last thoughts were with Ireland, and in each letter of farewell written to friends from the battlefield, he protests that he died in her holy cause. His soldier servant, writing home to me, says that on the eve of the battle the officers were served with pieces of green cloth to be stitched on the back of their uniforms, indicating that they belonged to the Irish Brigade. Tom touched his lovingly, saying: "Boy, I am proud to die for it!" Ireland,