He planned a group of Young Irishmen, as he named them, to do for Ireland what Roger's Improved Tories had hoped to do for England. They could study the conditions of Irish elementary education; they could try to make a survey of Irish wealth in the hope of discovering the incidence of its distribution; they could make an enquiry into work and wages, and try to stimulate the growth of Trades Unionism. He could help to make opinion, to create a social consciousness, to establish a tradition of honourable service to the community.... There were a host of things he could do, valuable things, for Ireland, things that were not now being done by any one. He knew people in Dublin, Crews and Jordan and Saxon and men like them, who were of his mind and would work patiently at dull things in the hope of getting an ordered community. Railways! One had to get the Irish railways reorganised and grouped. If one could solve the problem of traffic, so that the East and West and North and South of Ireland would be as accessible to each other as the East and West and North and South of England, one would have made a large movement towards a better state.... That was what he would do. He would help to construct things, not to destroy them. He was not afraid to go to the war ... that was not the reason why he was resolving that he would refuse to be a soldier. It was because he could do better, finer work by living for Ireland than by dying for England. People throughout Europe were already perturbed at the waste of potential men in war ... wondering whether, after all, it was a wise thing to let rare men, men of unique gifts go to war. Was it really wise of England to let such a man as Gilbert Farlow, with the rare gift of comedy, be lost in that haphazard manner? Ninian had had the potentialities of a great engineer. Would it not have been wiser to have kept him to his railway-building than to have let him fall, as he fell, to the bullet of a sniper?... Already people were asking such questions as these. If he were to go out, and were to be killed, would they not say, "This man had gifts that marked him out from other men. We ought not to have wasted him!" Well, why should he be wasted? He was not afraid. He insisted that he was not afraid. It needed high courage to stand up and say, "I am a man of special gift and I will not let that gift be wasted in war!" That, in effect, was what he was preparing to do. People would speak behind his back ... speak even to his face ... and call him a coward! Well, let them do so.... 3