Sinn Fein of pre-war days by a formal recognition of its identity with it and by the express adoption of its methods; and lastly that the means by which independence is to be achieved are defined as "any and every means available," the party being pledged neither to nor against any particular method. One of the methods upon which Sinn Fein now relied to achieve success was not the method of its earlier years. This was frankly acknowledged by its leaders. In an article on the Convention summoned by Count Plunkett to meet in the Mansion House in Dublin after his election for North Roscommon, _New Ireland_ (which was next to _Nationality_ the leading Sinn Fein weekly) wrote as follows: "In the years 1903--1910 the policy of Sinn Fein was a policy of self-reliance in the strictest sense of that term. It directed us away from Westminster and towards Ireland. It was revolutionary inasmuch as it sought to displace existing British institutions and substitute Irish institutions to which the Irish people would respond.... The newer Sinn Fein is not quite the same as the old: it varies in one essential characteristic. Whereas the old Sinn Fein directed the Irish people towards self-improvement as a basis of national strength and made it quite plain to us that many sacrifices might possibly be demanded, there is no trace in the newer Sinn Fein of these qualities. The older Sinn Fein deprecated the reliance upon any external source of strength and urged upon us the advantages of self-reliance and passive resistance. The new Sinn Fein places some of its faith at least in external bodies and does not inculcate the older doctrine of self-reliance and passive resistance. It is not, however, Sinn Fein that has changed so much as the world forces that condition such changes. The old policy flourished in a period of world peace and was in consequence disposed rather towards a long drawn out struggle: the new policy is specially devised to take advantage of the present temporary state of affairs." This may not be very carefully worded, and it is certain that Sinn Feiners as a body would not have accepted it as a complete and accurate statement of the change in the Sinn Fein programme: but it is a statement (although a careless statement) by a Sinn Fein paper of an important fact--that an appeal to the Peace Conference was not an exercise of "self-reliance" but the adoption for the time of a totally different policy. It was in effect an admission, not that the policy of self-reliance was a failure, but that it had not yet been a success and was not so likely to be successful in the immediate future as an appeal for outside understanding and sympathy. The Parliamentarians had appealed to the sympathy and justice of England: Sinn Fein had declared such an appeal to be futile and had refused to join in it. It was now prepared to issue its own appeal for help and justice not to England but to the Peace Conference. Ever since the Rising