O'Donovan, when we entered, was seated at a table writing vigorously. I do not know how he managed to write at all. His table was covered with stacks of newspapers, very dusty. He had cleared a small, a very small space in the middle of them, and his ink-bottle occupied a kind of cave hollowed out at the base of one of the stacks. It must have been extremely difficult to put a pen into it. The chairs--there were only two of them besides the editorial stool--were also covered with papers. But even if they had been free I should not have cared to sit down on them. They were exceedingly dirty and did not look safe. McNeice introduced me and then produced his own article. O'Donovan, very politely, offered me his stool. "McNeice tells me," he said, "that you are writing a history of Irish Rebellions. I suppose you have said that Nationalism ceased to exist about the year 1900?" "I hadn't thought of saying that," I said. "In fact--in view of the Home Rule Bill, you know--I should have said that Irish Nationalism was just beginning to come to its own." O'Donovan snorted. "There's no such thing as Irish Nationalism left," he said. "The country is hypnotized. We've accepted a Bill which deprives us of the most elementary rights of freemen. We've licked the boots of English Liberals. We've said 'thank you' for any gnawed bones they like to fling to us. We've--" It struck me that O'Donovan was becoming rhetorical. I interrupted him. "Idealism in politics," I said, "is one of the most futile things there is. What the Nationalist Party--" "Don't call them that," said O'Donovan. "I tell you they're not Nationalists." "I'll call them anything you like," I said, "but until you invent some other name for them I can't well talk about them without calling them Nationalists." "They--" said O'Donovan. "Very well," I said. "_They._ So long as you know who I mean, the pronoun will satisfy me. They had to consider not what men like you wanted, but what the Liberal Party could be induced to give. I don't say they made the best bargain possible, but--" "Anyhow," said McNeice, "we're not going to be governed by those fellows. That's the essential point." I think it is. The Unionist is not really passionately attached to the Union. He has no insuperable antipathy to Home Rule. Indeed, I think most Unionists would welcome any change in our existing system of government if it were not that they have the most profound and deeply rooted objection to the men whom McNeice describes as "those fellows," and O'Donovan indicates briefly as "they." "And so," I said, turning to O'Donovan, "in mere despair of nationality you have gone over to the side of the Unionists." "I've gone over," said O'Donovan, "to the side of the only people in Ireland who mean to fight."