This burst of nationalism, which had been lighted and fanned quite falsely by the first enthusiasts, penetrated from the cities to the villages; and the laggard to join the I.R.A. became inspired by example. Thus the army swelled its ranks, thus the national spirit was fanned as if by a bellows. And a third agent went to work in intimidation. The village lout who hesitated to enlist found it the worse for him. That youths joined the I.R.A. in haste to repent at leisure is borne out by orders issued by Republican authorities concerning deserters. But every wide movement of necessity gathers a certain scum, and there is no denying this national awakening was to turn many a village clown into a staunch soldier of the Irish Republic. A fact to be examined at this point is the surprising absence of people of breeding in the ranks of Sinn Fein. The rank and file of the movement was drawn from the working classes, while the leaders for the most part belonged to the lower middle classes. It would seem as if the Sinn Fein movement was a peculiar national expression of the world-wide conflict between servant and master. Europe as a whole, the world indeed, was in the throes of the Capital _versus_ Labour question, and the Sinn Fein movement was Ireland’s personal expression of the revolt of the humble person against authority. There was, of course, a sprinkling of gentry in the movement. The Dublin universities illustrated how opinion and class went together. The students of Trinity as a rule are gentlemen of birth, and as a body they were loyal to the Crown; the students of the National University, who are drawn from the middle classes, to a man declared for Sinn Fein. I have tried to be free of prejudice as I tramped the Dublin streets, yet I say out of my heart if one met a prosperous person, a spruce person, such person, nine times out of ten, proved a loyalist. After a month in Ireland I could pick out the Irish Volunteer. He wore a dirty velour hat, a shabby raincoat, and generally had his hands in his pockets. There was a youthful, cheeky type, belonging to the National University, and there was a dirtier, rather more prepossessing type, drawn from the errand boy and working classes. There was a better type still, which came from the country. One had only to notice the Republican Volunteer rubbing shoulders in the street with the British officer, to comprehend these people belonged to two poles, which could never meet. Barriers of class, education, and standards were between them--it was Capital and Labour over again. The British officer, from his stupendous height, regarded the Sinn Feiner through the big end of the telescope, classed all connected with Sinn Fein as “Shinners” and valued them as such. The Irish struggle did not develop along the lines of an ordinary war. It was not the late European war on a smaller scale. It was the case of an immensely powerful man fighting the shadow of a man.