 what no other man could do when he taught the nation with his wondrous words, and emptied his noble life out in order to inspire the effort that followed. De Valera did what Pearse could not have done when, with his astonishing gifts of constructive statesmanship, his persistence and his power over men, he carried on what Pearse and the other patriots before the Rising—Rooney, Bulfin, Griffith—had begun. He escaped because he was almost unknown. Had our enemies guessed what this young man, with a Spanish name had in him to do, he, too, would have been set with his back to a prison wall and shot down at dawn like Padraic Pearse, and his gentle brother, like gallant MacDonagh, the laughing Sean MacDermott, Connolly, the aged Tom Clarke and his youthful brother-in-law, Ned Daly, Michael O’Hanrahan, brave Major MacBride, the gallant Mallin, the resolute Kent, with the heroically glorious Joseph Mary Plunkett, Colbert and Heuston, who can doubt that God’s own providence saved this remarkable man for Ireland? Even people who were in touch with the national movement knew little more of the teacher of mathematics than that his name appeared in the Irish Volunteer in reports of military exercises (in which he was always prompt and silently efficient), and that he was the husband of a gracious lady and ardent Gaelic patriot, Sinéad Ni Fhlannagáin.
It was in prison that Eamon de Valera became leader of the Irish nation. When the soldiers of Ireland had been led through English streets, howled at and reviled, when they suffered all that prison can do to break the spirit of the brave, the alert, indomitable figure gave leadership. Eoin MacNeill appeared in the jail one day. How would the other prisoners receive the man who had broken the unity of the revolt? Eamon de Valera gave the answer. MacNeill was England’s prisoner; Irishmen must honour him. An order was rapped out. MacNeill was saluted. For this breach of prison discipline, De Valera was punished; but in one flashing sentence he had healed the nation’s division and had assumed the leadership. It was not that he sought to be leader. He did as his character, his sense of rightness, commanded him to do; and because he was so conspicuously gifted, he was followed. The prisoners became an ordered body even in their jailer’s grip.
Ireland was stirring. The Rising, the ballads that had broken from the nation’s heart, roused the people to their olden allegiance. In Roscommon, in Longford, by-elections were won by men who represented the Insurgent cause. Manifestly, the people had gone over to the Tri-colour of Easter Week. In an effort, after a year, to check the sweep of opinion over to the Prisoners, England sent the Prisoners home. We always remember that early Summer dawn over Dublin in 1917 when the ship brought our heroes back to us, and the streets were alive in the half-light with exultant folk.
England’s aim was to carry a measure of Home Rule, in which the Republicans would be represented by a small group, if at all, and she set up the famous Convention to get it adopted by everybody except the people who mattered. Griffith did one of the best deeds of his life in his skilful exposure of the rigging of the Convention; while, in the meantime, vital things happened.
One was the election of Eamon de Valera in the by-election in Clare by a swinging majority. Clare that won Emancipation by its election of Dan O’Connell now was the scene of another historic victory. Clare and de Valera were knit together in a union that always will be Clare’s great pride. The second vital thing was the adoption of de Valera, the hero of the fighting men, as the leader of Sinn Fein, the party in which all the patriotic movements and forces now were concentrated. The Convention was dissolved, but Sinn Féin had become the governing factor in Irish affairs.
In 1918, when German power was thrusting back the Allied line and English defeat seemed likely, the haters of Ireland tried to vent their wrath upon a nation that was not as formidable as Germany. Conscription was enacted and plans were laid to c