present system of education are trained neither to commerce nor to love of the development of their native land; accordingly a Sinn Fein school fund is now being collected so that the Irish parliament may soon be able to take over national education.

Sinn Fein could develop industry more easily if Ireland were free.[3] There is hope. It lies in Ireland's very lack of jobs. British labor does not like the competition of the cheap labor market next door. It rather welcomes the party that would push Irish industry. For with Irish industry developed Irish labor would become scarce and high. Already the British labor party has declared in favor of the self-determination of Ireland, and it is expected that with its accession to power there may be a final granting of self-determination to Ireland.

As we were leaving the Mansion House—to which some of us were invited to return to a reception for the delegates that evening—I found intense reaction to the speakers of the day. I asked a young American non-commissioned officer how he liked DeValera. He seemed to be as stirred by the name as the young members of DeValera's regiment who besiege Mrs. DeValera for some little valueless possession of the "chief's." The boy drew in his breath, and I expected him to let it out again in a flow of praise, but emotion seemed to get the better of him, and all he could manage was a fervent: "Oh, gee!" Then I came across young Sylvia Pankhurst, disowned by her family for her communist sympathies, and in Dublin for the purpose of persuading the Irish parliament to become soviet. The Irish speakers, she told me, were much to be preferred to the Americans. They used more figures and less figures of speech. And when I repeated her remark to Desmond Fitzgerald, a pink and fastidious member of parliament, he smilingly commented: "Well, we Irish are more sophisticated, aren't we?"

THE MAILED FIST

In the afternoon the curtain went up on a matinee performance of The Mailed
Fist.

The first act was in the home of Madame Gonne-McBride. It was, properly, an exposition of the power of the enemy.

With Madame Gonne-McBride, once called the most beautiful woman in Europe, Sylvia Pankhurst, and the sister, of Robert Barton, I entered the big house on Stephen's Green. Modern splashily vivid wall coloring. Japanese screens. Ancient carved madonnas. Two big Airedales thudded up and down in greeting to their mistress. I spoke of their unusual size.

Madame Gonne-McBride, taking the head of one of them between her hands:
"They won't let any one arrest me again, will they?"

She is tall and slim in her deep mourning—her husband was killed in the rebellion of 1916. Her widow's bonnet is a soft silky guipure lace placed on her head like a Red Cross worker's coif. On the breast of her black gown there hangs a large dull silver cross. Beggars and flower-sellers greet her by name. It is said that a large part of her popularity is due to her work in obtaining free school lunches. Anyway, there was great grief among the people when she was thrown into jail for supposed complicity in the unproved German plot. The arrest, she said, came one Sunday night. She was walking unconcernedly from one of George Russell's weekly gatherings, when five husky constables blocked the bridge road and hurried her off to jail. At last, on account of her ill health, she was released from prison—very weak and very pale.

Enter seventeen-year-old Sean McBride. Places back against the door. Blue eyes wide. Breathlessly: "They're after Bob Barton and Michael Collins. They've surrounded the Mansion House."

Hatless we raced across Stephen's Green—that little handkerchief of a park that never seemed so embroidered with turns and bridges and bandstands and duck ponds before. Through the crowd that had already gathered we edged our way till we came to the double line of bayonets and batons that guarded the entrance to Dawson street. Over the broad, blue shoulder of the policeman directly in front of me, I glimpsed a wicked-looking little whippet tank with two very conscious British officers just head and shoulders out. Still further down were three covered motor lorries that had been used to convey the soldiers.

Sean, for the especial benefit of constable just ahead: "Wars for democracy and small nations! And that's the only way they can keep us in the British empire. Brute force. Nice exhibition for the American journalists in town."

Constable stalked Sean back to edge of crowd. Sean looked at him steadily with slight twinkle in his eye. Miss Barton, Miss Pankhurst, and I climbed up a low stone wall that commanded the guarded street, and clung to the iron paling on top. Sean came and stood beneath.

Miss Pankhurst, regarding crowd in puzzled manner: "Why do you all smile?
When the suffragists were arrested we used to become furious."

Sean looking up at her in kindly manner in which old rebel might glance at impatient young rebel: "You forget. We're very used to this."

Miss Pankhurst made an unexpected jump from her place. She wedged her way to the line of soldiers. As she talked to two young Tommies they blushed and fiddled with their bayonets like girls with their first bouquets of flowers. Twice a British major admonished them.

Miss Pankhurst, returning: "Welsh boys. Just babies. I asked them why they came out armed to kill fellow workers. They said they had enlisted for the war. If they had known they were to be sent to Ireland they would have refused to go. I told them it was not too late to act. They could take off their uniforms. But they? They're weak—weak."

As dusk fell, party capes and tulle mists of head dresses began to appear between the drab or tattered suits of the bystanders. Among the coming reception guests was Susan Mitchell, co-editor with George Russell on The Irish Homestead.

Susan Mitchell, of constable: "Can't I go through? No? But there's to be a party, and the tea will get all cold."

In the courage of the crowd, the people began to sing The Soldiers' Song. It took courage. It was shortly after John O'Sheehan had been sentenced for two years for caroling another seditious lyric. A surge of sound brought out the words: "The west's awake!" Dying yokes. And a sudden right-about-face movement of the throng.

Crowd shouting: "Up the Americans!"

With Sinn Fein and American flags flying, the delegates' car rolled up to the outskirts of the crowd. A sharp order. The crowd-fearing bayonets lunged forward. Frank Walsh, looking through his tortoise-rim glasses at the steel fence, got out of his car. He walked up to the pointing bayonets, and asked for the man in charge.

Frank Walsh: "What's the row?"

The casualness of the question must have disarmed Lieutenant-Colonel Johnstone of the Dublin Military Police. He laughed. Then conferred. While the confab was on, the Countess Markewicz slipped from Mr. Walsh's car to our paling. She was, as usual, dressed in a "prepared" style. She had on her green tweed suit with biscuits in the pockets, "so if anything happened."

Countess Markewicz, rubbing her hands: "Excellent propaganda! Excellent propaganda!"

The motor lorries chugged. Soldiers broke line, and climbed in. The people screamed, jumped, waved their hands, and hurrahed for Walsh. Mr. Walsh returned to his car. And in the path made by the heartily boohed motor lorries, the American's machine commenced its victorious passage to the Mansion House. In order to get through the crowd to the reception we sprang to the rear of the motor. Clinging to the dusty mudguard, I remarked to Miss Pankhurst that we would not look very