fortunes till the issue of the war should be determined. Three months after war was declared the Sinn Fein, Republican and Labour papers were suppressed by the police. The public discussion of the terms upon which it might have been possible to range even Separatists against Germany, the granting to Ireland of something of her own to defend, being thus declared not to be in the public interest, it seemed as if no obstacle remained in the way of raising recruits all over the country. Irishmen were credited with a love of mingling in a fight without any nice discrimination as to the grounds of the quarrel or the merits of the dispute. "Is there not wars?" seemed to some of the authorities to be a sufficiently potent appeal. But it was found that there existed a confused and vague feeling that England as a whole had at last, in spite of much English opposition, come to take a friendly view of the Irish claim to self-government; that, if the war had not occurred when it did, some way out of the difficulty would have been found; that the Government was honest in its intentions and could hardly be blamed for the tactics of its opponents. Even a slight and doubtful indication of real friendliness on the part of England raises in Ireland a response which must often seem to be out of proportion to the cause which excited it; and at the beginning of the war Nationalist Ireland was ready to respond to the call for men in a way which roused the cynical criticism of the advanced wing of the Nationalist Party. "No English city," wrote the _Irish Worker_ in September, 1914, "is displaying more enthusiasm than Dublin in sending its bravest and best to murder men with whom they have no quarrel." The Scottish Borderers, leaving for the Front, received an enthusiastic send-off from the city in which a short while before they had had to be confined to barracks; all over the country men were flocking to recruit in the first few weeks of the war. Anti-English feeling was practically smothered in a wave of enthusiasm. The Irish Volunteers, now apparently under the assured control of the Parliamentary Party, became the subjects of an almost embarrassing interest. Unionist peers and gentry, retired militia officers and other people, not (to say the least) distinguished for Irish patriotism, hastened to enrol in their ranks and to proffer their services. The name of Major the Earl of Fingall appearing as Chief Inspecting Officer of the Irish Volunteers in Meath in an order signed by Colonel Maurice Moore, "Inspector-General, Irish Volunteers," would have seemed strange six months before and stranger still a year afterwards. But it provoked little comment in August, 1914. It seemed as if a miracle were about to happen and it became the apparent business of the authorities to take steps to secure that it should not happen.