Much less could the pink-faced Derby boys understand--and so I suppose thought, because the crisis had synchronized with the European war and was aimed at a state of things tolerated by English rule, it was therefore only another indication of Ireland's double dose of original sin, which always drove her to disloyalty to her benefactor. Dr. O'Dwyer, Bishop of Limerick, one of the ablest as well as the most independent thinkers in Ireland, has been mentioned as one of the forces of the rebellion--in fact, he was generally supposed to be one of the marked men of the Fein programme of suppression, being considered more dangerous to the realm than Connolly--in a word, he was looked upon as a red-hot Sinn Feiner. Yet if his famous Lenten pastoral be examined one will find it merely the broad Christian aspect of the war--nor would the cynical diplomatist, if we could get him to be candid, say he was far wrong in his facts. Thus, for example, speaking of the only possible result of the prolongation of the war to final victory for either party, he says:-- "No one can foresee even the smallest part of the consequences of this war. One thing, however, is certain, that it will leave the world in a condition of the direst poverty. The destruction of capital is enormous, not in one country, but in all of them. If the war ceased to-morrow it would have impoverished all Europe beyond recovery for generations, but that poverty, by itself, will probably be the least of its evils. It will mean the paralysis of industry, the restriction of commerce, unemployment on a scale that has never been known before, and it is an anxious question how a hitherto powerful, well-paid, well-organized population of workers will submit to the altered state of things. We have had, from time to time, some ugly threatenings of socialism, but we may fear that they are no more than the first mutterings of the storm which will burst upon European society as soon as this war is over. "This terrible danger, which may be on us within the next three or four years, may well be worse than the war itself, and deluge Europe again in blood. If anyone thinks that millions of working men, trained to arms in every country in Europe, will settle down peaceably to starvation in order to help to re-amass fortunes for their 'betters,' he may have a rude awakening." It is his attitude towards England, however, that has brought him into conflict with the recruiting authorities--yet what is the following passage, taken from his famous Lenten pastoral, but the purely Catholic attitude of a bishop who looks to the head of his Church for guidance, and seeing the Papacy neutral on the chaos, tries to keep the war fever from spreading to his own flock, for, after all, he spoke as a Churchman, not as a politician.