But in spite of official policies and intentions there had slowly been formed a small but determined minority in Ireland who looked to revolution as the only sure and manly policy for a nation pledged to freedom. This, the creed of the Fenians, had not been openly avowed in Ireland for almost half a century: Nationalists had come to regard it either as a forlorn hope, a gallant but hopeless adventure, or as a policy out of harmony with modern civilization and progress. Here and there a lonely but picturesque figure might be seen, "an old Fenian," in the world but not of it, who spoke with a resigned contempt of the new men and the new methods, an inspiration but hardly an example to the younger generation. There was still in existence the Irish Republican Brotherhood, an obscure and elusive body, mysterious as the Rosicrucians and to all outward appearances of hardly any more political importance. A secret but apparently innocuous correspondence was understood to be kept up by them with America where, among an important and influential section of the expatriated Irish, the hope was more widely and more openly cherished of a day when Ireland would shake off the lethargy of a generation and revert to the age-long claim for independence. For a short time it seemed as if the prospect of the grant of Home Rule would quench the last embers of the revolutionary fire, as if the English democracy had at last stretched out a friendly hand and that the rest would be the work of time. Ulster's appeal to arms quickened the embers to a flame; in less than two years' time a revolution was spoken of more openly than had been the case for fifty years. No man in Ireland would have taken up arms to secure Home Rule: it was a "concession" which to some Nationalists seemed the greatest that could be obtained, to others (and perhaps the majority) to be a step upon the road to a larger independence: both sections were agreed that it should be sought by constitutional methods. But force might be the only means of retaining what it had been proper to secure without it, and the Irish Volunteers were prepared to fight those who attempted to take from the people of Ireland any right which they had been able to secure.