The prevalence of the illusion of British liberty has been an obstacle to the understanding of Ireland's problem for many years, and correspondingly the Sinn Fein foreign policy is not a recent phenomenon, since its objective has been the same for centuries as it is to-day. The French critic, Emile Montegut, writing in 1855 of Mitchel's _Jail Journal_, admitted the difficulty when he said: "If the oppressor of Ireland were Austria or Russia, no invective, no anger, would suffice to denounce the injustice and cruelty of the tyrant. Unhappily, the oppressor of Ireland is England, Protestant England, constitutional, liberal, industrial, and trading England, the most accomplished type of the modern nation, the model of nineteenth century civilization." In recent times circumstances have tended to correct and modify the enthusiasm of an opinion which has been fortified, nevertheless, by the current identification of British commercial democracy with an ideal condition of society which must be protected at all costs. The neutral world is blandly assured of the necessity for accepting every humiliation, in view of the precious heritage at stake. The tacit, and often avowed, assumption is that the human race is deeply indebted to the noble altruism of the belligerents, who have brought devastation and famine upon the world for the greater glory of civilization. As a consequence of this Sinn Fein view of foreign affairs, the Irish themselves are at a disadvantage in presenting their case, for again, it is a question of an unauthorized egoism, an egoism not upon the official schedule of edifying war-aims. Montegut became aware of this when he tried to diagnose John Mitchel as a revolutionary, who might expect the sympathy of Europe. "The most anarchical Irishman," he wrote, "the most fiery partisan of physical force is, in fact, less versed in liberal ideas than the most obstinate monarchist on the Continent." As for John Mitchel, his French critic estimated him in terms which are as true of his disciples to-day as of the Young Ireland Movement and its predecessors. "He is revolutionary on the surface, in his accent and expression, but not in spirit or in principle"; such was the judgment of the first impartial admirer who was attracted to Mitchel by the purely literary qualities of that masterpiece of passion and irony, _The Jail Journal_. The most learned of the leaders of Sinn Fein, with a carelessness incredible in a professional historian, has tried to dismiss Emile Montegut as a hack journalist of the _Entente_! This sixty year old essay on John Mitchel contains, nevertheless, a classic description of the Irish rebel, as he exists, and has always existed, to the discomfiture of those who do not appreciate the "splendid isolation" of the Sinn Fein idea. Summing up the Young Ireland leader's attitude in foreign affairs, Montegut says: