Leaf 19 recto

language as a mental field upon which all
Irishmen might meet. It was on that principle
that the [language] movement was built up on the early
days. It gathered in even from the very first
a number I might even say a great number of Unionists, people of wealth and
standing, and it was not long until their Un-
-ionist principles were cut away as by an
acid, and they became as national as any other
body in Ireland. Then too I was always
able to boast that though our movement
did not contain the whole of any body of thought
or a religion in [Ireland] the country still that there was no
body or religion that it did not draw some
of its adherent from, and as it took every sort
to make a nation we were really building up a nation
very effectively.