I


The time has not yet come to write the biography of John Redmond. Not
until the history of the pledge-bound Irish Parliamentary party can be
treated freely, fully and impartially as a chapter closed and ended will
it be possible to record in detail the life of a man who was associated
with it almost from its beginning and who from the opening of this
century guided it with almost growing authority to the statutory
accomplishment of its desperate task; who knew, in it and for it, all
vicissitudes of fortune and who gave to it without stint or reservation
his whole life's energy from earliest manhood to the grave.

But when the war came, unforeseen, shifting all political balances,
transmuting the greatest political issues, especially those of which the
Irish question is a type, it imposed upon men and upon nations, but
above all on the leaders of nations, swift and momentous decisions.
Because that critical hour presented to Redmond's vision a great
opportunity which he must either seize single-handed or let it for ever
pass by; because he rose to the height of the occasion with the courage
which counts upon and commands success; because he sought by his own
motion to swing the whole mass and weight of a nation's feeling into a
new direction--for all these reasons his last years were different in
kind from any that had gone before; and as such they admit of and demand
separate study. Intelligent comprehension of what he aimed at, what he
achieved, and what forces defeated him in these last years of his life
is urgently needed, not for the sake of his memory, but for Ireland's
sake; because until his policy is understood there is little chance that
Irishmen should attain what he aspired to win for Ireland--the strength