Sinn Fein was the opposite of all this. It appealed alike from force and from fact to an ideal justice. Unable to win independence from a power both strong enough to coerce it and interested for economic and military reasons in retaining its hold upon Ireland, it refused to ask for "pledges" which it felt sure would be broken, even if given, it refused to plead its case before a court whose interests were engaged against it in advance. It preferred to appeal to its rights, though there was no tribunal before which its plea could come. It hoped that at the Peace Conference the principle of self-determination could not be insisted upon as against Germany, without Germany claiming that it should be acknowledged in the case of Ireland. To its dismay and (it would seem) to its surprise Germany was not represented at the discussions: the Peace was dictated by a body in which none but the victors were represented and of which the object was not so much to establish a principle as to enforce a settlement, even at the risk of establishing a precedent. The claim of Sinn Fein that Ireland should be represented at the Conference as an interested party was brushed aside, contemptuously by the representatives of England and France, shamefacedly by the representative of America. The League of Nations which the Peace Conference set up was expressly constructed to prevent interference with the sovereign rights of its chief members as they existed at the time it was constructed: the right of England to retain whatever dominion it pleases over Ireland is guaranteed by the League of Nations in advance. Disappointed of the hopes placed in the Peace Conference and the League of Nations, Sinn Fein has to rely either on the interference in its favour of some Power whose friendship England cannot disregard (an interference rendered less easy than it was by the very League of Nations which was expected to make it easier) or on the gradual and silent force of European opinion, or on the result of some future war. Sinn Fein takes its stand upon the proposition that Ireland is a nation and upon the assertion that all nations have a just claim to independence. The proposition cannot be controverted except by arguments which go to prove that no such thing as a nation exists, and the assertion that all nations have a just claim to independence is like the assertion that all men have a right to be free: each is admitted in principle, but the principle is subject in practice to so many modifications that to say that a nation is free is to say what may mean as many different things as there are nations called free. A nation may be politically free and economically dependent, or vice versa: each of these conditions may be of various degrees on each side: and each of these again may be combined with varying degrees of moral, social and intellectual dependence.