Cuimhní cinn a breacadh 1918-19 : an chéad chuid

6

ally had taken us up and given us his blessing. This was a distant milestone in the early progress of the League.

There was never any trouble about keeping "national" politics as expounded by the members of Parliament out of the League, and I never heard even a mention of evicted tenants. The trouble was to keep out politics of the Wolf Tone or Ferrian type. These growing stronger by degrees came on with a rush in 1914 & 1915 and ended by capturing the League, its officers its machinery & its money. I suppose the fulness of the time for such capture had come. But I at least had consistently held out against

7

anything but a pure language movement, and had reiterated to the public over and over again that the League was only a language movement, and that so long as I was in it I would never consent to its being made anything else. It was on the strength of this attitude that we won over men like Sir Horace Plunkett ^{and Cardinal Logue} & won over the schools or at least made much way on in them. But I myself was pledged before the country, pledged to the very teeth, to keep the League out of politics, and I had absolutely no choice whatever left but to retire from it when I thought it was becoming political. I accordingly com-mitted Hari-Kari with as good a grace as

8

possible, although I am not at all sure that the League did not do the right thing for the language in practically throwing me over. I did not see this at the time however, for I did not foresee the utter ^{and [swift?]} debacle of the Win Parliamentary party and the apothesis of Sinn Fein. The only reason I had for keeping politics out was the desire to offend nobody and get help from every party, which I did. But when Sinn Fein swallowed up all parties except the Unionists, this was no longer necessary in the same way, because when all the country was one party and that a friendly one we could lose nothing by embracing it, except a certain amount of Unionist assistance which did not amount to very much now, though it had

9

been so invaluable to us when we were growing. But I think we I think we had won over the best of the Unionists who were inclined that way, and I doubt that many more would have come in to us. If any such came over and got into any touch with the Dublin League they would have soon detected the Larkenite democratic trend of it, which marked its last years so strongly, and have been warned off or deterred by the new atmosphere.