In August and September, he acted as war correspondent for the _Daily News_, and in this capacity was a witness of the agony of Belgium. He returned to Ireland burning with indignation against Prussia. He referred to Germany as “the outlaw of Europe.” “It is impossible not to be with Belgium in this struggle,” he wrote to the _Daily News_; “it is impossible any longer to be passive. Germany has thrown down a well-considered challenge to all the forces of our civilisation. War is hell, but it is only a hell of suffering, not of dishonour, and through it, over its flaming coals, Justice must walk, were it on bare feet.” It was as an Irish soldier in the army of Europe and civilisation that he entered the war. “He was horrified,” said Mr. Lynd very truly, “by the spectacle of a bully let loose on a little nation. He was horrified, too, at the philosophic lie at the back of all this greed of territory and power. He was horrified at seeing the Europe he loved going down into brawling and bloody ruin. Not least--and no one can understand contemporary Ireland who does not realise this--he was horrified by the thought that if Germany won, Belgium would be what he had mourned in Ireland--a nation in chains. An international Nationalist--that was the mood in which he offered his services to the War Office.” I think the chief reason his motives have been misunderstood is that few have gone to the trouble of understanding his wide outlook. He was a European. He was deeply steeped in European culture. He was _au courant_ with European politics. He knew his France, his Germany, his Russia as well as we know our Limerick, Cork and Belfast. Mr. Healy once said his idea of a nation ended with the Kish lightship. Tom Kettle’s ideal was an Ireland identified with the life of Europe. “Ireland,” he wrote, “awaits her Goethe who will one day arise to teach her that, while a strong nation has herself for centre, she has the universe for circumference.... My only programme for Ireland consists in equal parts of Home Rule and the Ten Commandments. My only counsel to Ireland is, that to become deeply Irish, she must become European.” That counsel was given six years before the war. It was acting on that counsel that he deemed it right to make the final sacrifice, and in a European struggle sign his ideal with the seal of his blood. England and English thought had nothing to do with his attitude to the war. England happened to be on the side of Justice. He acknowledges that, but says rather bitterly, “England goes to fight for liberty in Europe but junkerdom in Ireland.” Mr. Shane Leslie is absolutely right when he says, “He died for no Imperialistic concept, no fatuous Jingoism.” “Let this war go forward,” he wrote to the _Daily News_ in 1914, “on its own merits and its own strong justice. After the war of the peoples, let us have the peoples’ peace. Let us drop statecraft and return to the Ten Commandments--now that we have got such a good bit of the way back.”