As for his work in literature in 1910, he published a volume of essays entitled The Day’s Burden, the best known and most characteristic of his writings.
In 1911 he wrote a pamphlet on Home Rule Finance, and in the same year he translated and edited Luther Kneller’s Christianity and the Leaders of Modern Science.
In 1911 he also edited and wrote a brilliant introduction to M. Halévy’s Life of Nietzsche, translated by Mr. Hone.
In 1912 he wrote The Open Secret of Ireland, putting the case of Ireland in his own inimitable way.
In 1912 he was one of the first prominent men identified with the foundation of the National Volunteers. A passage taken from an article written for the Daily News on the Volunteers has now a poignant interest—
“The impulse behind the new departure is not that of the swashbuckler or the fire-eater. Ancient Pistol has no share in it. In no country is the red barbarism of war as a solvent of differences more fully recognised than in Ireland. In no other is the wastage of the public substance on vast armaments more strongly condemned on grounds alike of conscience and intelligence. If Ireland has a distinguished military tradition, she has another tradition to which she holds more proudly, that of peace and culture. In her golden age she, unique in Europe, wrought out the ideal of the civilisation-state as contrasted with the brute-force state. She never oppressed or sought to destroy another nation. What she proposes to herself now is not to browbeat or dragoon or diminish by violence the civil or religious liberty of any man—but simply to safeguard her own.”
It is this man who speaks thus proudly of Ireland’s noble tradition of peace and culture, this man to whom war was “red barbarism,” who found it necessary to quit his own assured path “of peace and culture” and, with only the qualification of courage, assume the profession of a soldier.
In 1914 he edited a book on Irish Orators and Irish Oratory. Many have held his introduction to this his finest piece of writing.
When the war broke out he was engaged in Belgium buying rifles for the Volunteers. In August and September, 1914, he was war correspondent for the Daily News in Belgium. I shall quote just one passage which briefly sums up his attitude—an attitude which I have already endeavoured to explain, as far as explanation is necessary. “When this great war fell on Europe, those who knew even a little of current ethical and political ideas felt that the hour of Destiny had sounded. Europe had once more been threatened by Barbarism, Odin had thrown down his last challenge to Christ. To you, these may or may not seem mere phrases: to anyone whose duty has imposed on him some knowledge of Prussia, they are realities as true as the foul of Hell. When the most fully guaranteed and most sacred treaty in Europe—that which protected Belgium—was violated by Germany, when the frontier was crossed and the guns opened on Liége, without hesitation we declared that the lot of Ireland was on the side of the Allies. As the wave of infamy swept further and further over the plains of Belgium and France, we felt it was the duty of those who could do so to pass from words to deeds.”
“To Odin’s challenge, we cried Amen!