Sinn Fein certainly has brought intellect, imagination and constructive ideas into Irish politics to a degree unparalleled since the days of the Young Irelanders of 1848. It remains to be stated here that the Rebellion of April 1916 was not entirely the work of the Sinn Fein party but the result of the continued preaching of the Fenian doctrines. Up to 1916 Sinn Fein had put forward only one candidate for an Irish constituency and he was over whelmingly defeated. The Irish question was shelved for a time by the British Cabinet. On 27 April 1917 Lloyd George proposed an Irish convention to settle the Irish question, promis ing that if there developed a substantial major ity for Home Rule within the convention his government would legalize the recommendations of that majority. After a year of discussion a plan of Home Rule was adopted and agreed upon by all but 19 Ulster Unionists, and an April 1918 Lloyd George held that the 19 dis senting votes out of 100 showed a lack of sub stantial agreement and stated that Ireland's case would thereafter be treated as a purely British question. On 17 May 1918 Dublin Castle (the centre of the English bureaucracy in Ireland) issued a proclamation declaring the discovery of a vast German plot. Eamonn De Valera, Arthur Griffith and numbers of prominent Sinn Feiners were arrested and sent to England to be confined °during the King's pleasure.° When several days passed without either arraignment or trial of any of the prisoners, a general demand arose that the government disclose some proof of the alleged German-Sinn Fein plot. Although the Labor party, many Liberals and the Irish Nationalists, and the press demanded that evidence of the plot be produced, the government remained silent. In this connection, nothing is more significant than the statement of Lord Wim bourne, former Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, that throughout his regime he had discovered no sign of the alleged plot and asserting his belief that satisfactory evidence of its existence could not be produced. The Sinn Feiners, men and women, were confined in England until March 1919 without arraignment, without the production of one single piece of evidence against them and were denied the right of counsel. By the end of June 1918 Conscrip tion and Home Rule measures were formally abandoned, and the government in Ireland ran its course to the elections of December 1918. The Sinn Fein party went before the electorate on the definite proposition of an independent Irish republic, and the total separation of Ire land from the political system known as the British Empire. At the polls the Sinn Fein
victory was overwhelming. Out of 32 coun ties its candidates ran unopposed in 22. In Ulster it carried Donegal, Monaghan and Cavan, and won majorities in Fermanagh and Tyrone, carried a seat in Derry City, the sup posed stronghold of Unionism. It lost only in Down, Derry, Armagh and Antrim. Of 101 members the Sinn Fein elected 73. the National ists seven and the Unionists 21. With this mandate from seven-tenths of the people of Ireland, the Sinn Feiners proceeded to organize their Irish Parliament. On 21 Jan. 1919 the Dail Eireann (Irish Parliament) met in Dublin and called upon the free nations of the world to support the Irish republic by recognizing Ireland's national status. Eamonn De Valera was chosen President of the Irish republic. He, with Arthur Griffith and Count Plunkett, were named commissioners to the Peace Con ference at Paris. Passports being denied them, three Irish-Americans interceded in their be half with the American delegates at Paris but without result. The three Irish-Americans, however, Messrs. Dunne, Ryan and Walsh, were permitted by the British government to visit Ireland. They reported that they found condi tions °appalling?' Men were herded in filthy, unsanitary prison dungeons, were compelled to sleep in clothes drenched with cold water, were compelled to attend divine service with hands fastened behind their backs, etc., etc. The pub lication of the report called forth much discus sion, vigorous denials and as vigorous demands for investigation. After a delay of two weeks the Chief Secretary for Ireland made his reply to the charges in Parliament, explaining or denouncing the findings of the report, but its authors insisted upon its truthfulness, and that an impartial committee should be appointed to pass upon the facts of which they had au thentic evidence. In 1919 De Valera made a lecture tour in the United States explaining the purposes and aims of the Sinn Fein.
Barker, Ernest,