The articles which follow were contributed by me to _Irish Freedom_
during the eight months extending from June 1913 to January 1914. They
thus form a contemporary commentary on the period immediately preceding
and covering the rise of the Irish Volunteers: a period which, when
things assume their proper perspective, will probably be regarded as the
most important in recent Irish history. I commenced the series with the
deliberate intention, by argument, invective, and satire, of goading
those who shared my political views to commit themselves definitely to
an armed movement. I felt quite sure that the hour was ripe for such a
movement, but did not in the beginning foresee the precise form it was
to assume. When I wrote the article for November 1913 a group of
Nationalists with whom I was in touch had decided to found the Irish
Volunteers, and we were looking about for a leader who would command the
adhesion of men less “advanced” than we were known to be: of our own
followers we were sure. When I wrote the article for December 1913, Eoin
MacNeill had (quite unexpectedly) published his article “The North
Began” in _An Claidheamh Soluis_, and we had agreed to invite him to put
himself at our head. The rest is a part of Irish history.
In the article for August 1913, I have omitted part of the Open Letter
to Douglas Hyde; and I have made one or two verbal changes in a few of
the other articles.