The truth is that our sacred egoism, strong and exacerbated as it is, has not yet touched the sublime heights of British selfishness and self-complacency. England refuses absolutely to be convinced, by the painful and reiterated facts of our history, that this country is not merely a turbulent province! Therefore, it ought to be possible to break our resistance, or to cajole us, as was done in England when the various Military Service Acts were passed. The men of the country were split up into antagonistic groups; the married against the single, the middle-aged against the young, trade against trade. Each wanted to escape at the cost of the other. In Ireland, of course, no such division can be created, for the simple reason that we have never refused to fight for our own country. Our detestation of pacifists equals even that of the English gutter-press, and our incredible indifference to personal, as distinct from national, convictions makes Ireland a paradise for militarists. But they must be militarists of our own creation. Sinn Féin fosters the development of native industries, and supports home products, often with an embarrassing disregard for the consequences. The Irish anti-militarist is, therefore, rarely a pacifist, and his objections are of a very different order from those which are surmounted or crushed by the advocates of military service in Great Britain. But it does not seem as if this elementary fact will be recognized, for to recognize it would be for England to admit that Ireland is a nation. To the denial and obscuration of that enduring truth centuries of English policy have gone, and in Ireland everything has been sacrificed to its assertion and reiteration. It lies at the back of the whole Anglo-Irish controversy, and sums up the essence of innumerable volumes which have attempted to state the case for Irish freedom. Until the fact of Irish Nationality is accepted by England, and acted upon, it will be the task of Sinn Féin to proclaim the sacred egoism of a nation that will not die.