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A fact to be examined at this point is the surprising absence of people of breeding in the ranks of Sinn Fein. The rank and file of the movement was drawn from the working classes, while the leaders for the most part belonged to the lower middle classes. It would seem as if the Sinn Fein movement was a peculiar national expression of the world-wide conflict between servant and master. Europe as a whole, the world indeed, was in the throes of the Capital versus Labour question, and the Sinn Fein movement was Ireland’s personal expression of the revolt of the humble person against authority.

There was, of course, a sprinkling of gentry in the movement.

The Dublin universities illustrated how opinion and class went together. The students of Trinity as a rule are gentlemen of birth, and as a body they were loyal to the Crown; the students of the National University, who are drawn from the middle classes, to a man declared for Sinn Fein.

I have tried to be free of prejudice as I tramped the Dublin streets, yet I say out of my heart if one met a prosperous person, a spruce person, such person, nine times out of ten, proved a loyalist.