It was difficult for Ireland to reconcile herself to the thought that she, who had engaged so much sympathetic attention, was now being overlooked. Rather than risk the danger of a loyalist rebellion in the midst of England's great war, the British Government decided to put the strain on nationalist Ireland, rather than test the insistent love of the professional patriots. No doubt it would have been disconcerting to the imperialist illusion, had Ulster proceeded to stab its "mother country" in the back, when asked to accept the measure of autonomy constitutionally and democratically conferred upon the Irish people. England preferred to rely upon the good-will of her political adversaries, mistrusting the capacity for sacrifice of her vociferous friends. Even then, Ireland might have been disposed to fight for those "larger aspects" of freedom so dear to the progressive philosophers of English politics, who have never yet been thus commanded: that the charity of political democracy begins abroad. Omniscient bureaucracy, in rapid process of becoming omnipotent, so met the efforts of those Irish who would have the national character of the military alliance preserved, that the alliance did not take place. Rebuffed in her natural demand for some tokens of national recognition as a fighting unit amongst the Allies, Ireland began to realize the importance of establishing an identity which was ignored, and was in danger of being forgotten. Naturally resentment fixed upon the authors and mediators of the "sacred union" which had failed to fulfil itself, and its weapon was that originally forged for the defence of the conquest of a measure of autonomy abandoned under the terms of the political truce. The armed forces which had been brought into existence by the threat of a loyalist rebellion were turned to the task of asserting the existence of a forgotten small nationality. In due course the Easter Rising took place, and by a blood-sacrifice Ireland once more claimed the rights which, she had been assured, were being enforced on the battlefields of Europe. Death having become more valuable than life, as a result of the new belligerent philosophy of a world at arms, Irishmen determined to demonstrate that there are more ways than one of dying for freedom. The hopelessness of the enterprise proved its ultimate strength, for desperate courage has a peculiar influence upon the pacific civilian, to which category the vast majority of the Sinn Fein public belonged. Just as the militarist is enraged by the spectacle of defiant courage over which he has no control, so the non-combatant patriot is effected by what impresses him as mystic valour. Even official testimony now records the triumph of that insurrectionary failure, in so far as the stiffening of the national purpose is concerned.