So labor fights for a republic first. At the last general elections it
withdrew all its labor party candidates that the Sinn Fein candidates might
have a clear field to demonstrate to the world how unified is Irish
sentiment in favor of a republic. And at the International Labor and
Socialist conference held in Berne in 1919, Cathal O'Shannon, the bright
young labor leader who goes about with his small frame swallowed up in an
overcoat too big for him, made this declaration:

"Irish labor reaffirms its declaration in favor of free and absolute
self-determination of each and every people, the Irish included, in
choosing the sovereignty and form of government under which it shall live.
It rejoices that this self-determination has now been assured to the
Jugo-Slavs, Czecho-Slovaks, Alsatians and Lorrainers, as well as to the
Finns, Poles, Ukrainians, and now to the Arabs. This is not enough and it
is not impartial. To be one and the other, this principle must also be
applied in the same sense and under the same conditions to the peoples of
Ireland, India, Egypt, and to such other people as have not yet secured the
exercise of the inherent right.... Irish labor claims no more and no less
for Ireland than for the others."

After the republic, a workers' republic? After Sinn Fein, the Labor party?
Madame Markewicz is high in the councils of both Sinn Fein and Labor. One
day, lost in one of her trance-like meditations in which she states her
intuitions with absolute disregard of expediency, she said to me:

"Labor will swamp Sinn Fein."

[Footnote 1. Figures supplied by William O'Brien, secretary Irish Labor
party and Trade Union congress, 1919.]