of dark laurel.  We stopped dead on a road arched with trees.  We got out, clicked the car door softly shut, turned a corner, and walked some distance in the cool night.  As we walked I made I forget what request in regard to the interview from young Mr. Boland, and with the reverent regard and complete obedience to DeValera’s wishes that is characteristic in the young Sinn Feiners—­a state of mind that does not, however, prevent calling the president “Dev”—­he said simply:  “But I must do what he tells me.”  At the door of a modestly comfortable home whose steps we mounted, a thick-set man blocked my way for a moment.

“You won’t,” he asked, “say where you came?”

“I’m sure,” I returned, “I haven’t an idea where I am.”

DeValera was giving rapid, almost breathless, orders in Irish to some one as I entered his room.  His thin frame towered above a dark plush-covered table.  A fire behind him surrounded him with a soft yellow aura.  His white, ascetic, young—­he is thirty-seven—­face was lined with determination.  Doors and windows were hung with thick, dark-red portieres, and the walls were almost as white as DeValera’s face.

“Pardon us for speaking Irish,” he apologized.  “We forget.  Now first of all, we will go over the questions you sent me.  I have written the answers.  They must appear as I have put them down.  That is the condition on which the interview takes place.”

Did Sinn Fein plan immediate revolution?  The president ran a fountain pen under the small, finely written lines as he remarked in an aside that he was not a writer but a mathematician.  No.  The sudden set of the president’s jaw indicated that this man who had fought in the 1916 rebellion till even his enemies had praised him, was the man who had decided there would be no reception at the bridge.  No.  There would be no armed revolt till all peaceable methods had failed.

If Sinn Fein succeeded in getting separation, would it establish a bolshevistic government?  DeValera returned that he was not sure what bolshevism is.  As far as he understood bolshevism, Sinn Fein was not bolshevistic.  But perhaps, by the way, bolshevism had been as misrepresented in the American press as Sinn Fein.  Right there, I took exception and said that from his own point of view I did not see what good slurring the American press would do his cause.  Immediately he answered as if only the principal phase of the matter had occurred to him:  “But it’s true.”  Then he continued:  The worker is unfairly treated.  Whether it is bolshevistic or not, Sinn Fein hopes to bring about a government in which there will be juster conditions for the laboring classes.

CAUSE AND REMEDY OF SOCIAL CONDITIONS.

The empire does not consider the cause of revolt.[1] But the republic is interested not only in the cause but also in the remedy.