First Published: 1917
This reprint: © The Cork Workers' Club, October, 1975

1. An Irish Republic founded on purely democratic lines.

2. Taking over "private lands" (without compensation) for the use of all the people, all mines, railways, fisheries - all the means of life.

3. Control of all industries and distribution by the producers; nationalisation of all industries.

4. The sweeping away of all demesne walls, and all such relics of Feudalism.

5. To provide productive work for the landlord class and all their parasites; to confiscate all stored wealth which was produced by Labour, and to use it for the benefit of all.

6. To level all slum dwellings in towns and country, and to build happy homes for the people; to sweep away forever the terrible sight of women and children sleeping on doorsteps and hall-ways; and to have no idle fat non-producers in the community.

Published by:
The Cork Workers Club
9 St. Nicholas Church Place
Cove St., Cork
1975

All down the ages man was, and is, engaged in one long struggle for existence. People of the working class appear to be satisfied with the historical "facts" which are served up in the so-called "National Schools" of Ireland, schools in which the Irish children are brought up to be "good little children of the Empire," and with their minds and brains twisted and distorted as to the history of their own country. It is in these schools the slave mind is nourished; and from them spring the thousands of mental cripples that can be met with all over the country.

The glorification of kings, queens, princes, and all the other satellites of which courts are composed, and their conquests over other nations - "small nationalities" - are driven daily into the Irish child's head, with the result, there is no time left to think of Ireland and its history.

It is only when they have to face the world, and take some place in the fight for bread; when perhaps hunger forces them to sell their labour power to the lowest bidder that they wake up to the fact that their teachers were blind guides. The flag they were taught to worship but a coloured rag, and their masters - the capitalist landlords - with one twist of the economic screw, can throw them on the road to starve, like homeless dogs, or else conscript them to fight for a system they hate and for a country they have no claim to.

The early history of the world is reserved for the "better classes," as the inferior brains of the "lower order" might not be able to stand the shock or retain the knowledge, which is to be obtained from the book that does not lie - the Book of Nature. To instruct them that their ancestors lived socially in caves thousands of centuries ago would do away with the "Master idea," that the first enemy man had to encounter were wild beasts, and on his conquest over them his evolution from the cave to the hut, from the hut to the small house, and from thence to the mansion or modern castle, with its electric lights and other luxuries.

By throwing a blanket over the past, and hiring dope-doctors to preach cloudy parables about spooks, demons, miracles, etc., with beautiful stories olf future happiness beyond the skies as a reward for the starvation, slums, prostitution, and destitution, which is the share of the masses of today. By such means the unfortunate poor are kept quiet, instead of turning on their tyrants as the people of France did over a century ago, and as the people of other advanced countries are now doing.

When John Ball, the Catholic priest, preached a sermon on

"When Adam delved and Eve span
Where was then the gentleman,"

The gentlemen who "owned" England promptly got John hung, drawn, and quartered as an example to the clergy to preach only what their masters required.

In order to get a proper grasp of the economic position as it is today, and its bearings on the past, it will be necessary to take a brief survey of earlier events.

In early Ireland, under the Brehon Laws, all the people had access to the land: it was common to all.

In their old age the people were looked after, well fed and nursed, without the pauper stigma of these times. The chief of the clan was the father of his people.

When William the Conqueror finished up dividing the land of England amongst his braves, the overflow of hungry adventurers turned their eyes to Ireland, and with their arrival in Ireland in 1170 the slavery, bloodshed, and wholesale robbery has continued ever since. One distinguished cut-throat, Raymond Le Gros by name (Raymond the Fat), carved out for himself a large portion of the Co. Waterford. In doing so he murdered and burnt all in his path, and as the foreign landlords are now collecting money to erect a monument to one of that family, the people of Ireland "at home and abroad" won't forget their great services to "other" countries.

The breaking up of the Irish family lands or communal system deprived the people of their means of life, and placed them in the position of either serfs or outlaws. As the Norman-English system was vast private estates - a system still retained in England, as the people of that country know to their cost, and to a large extent in Ireland. The unfortunate Irish know to their cost - here is met for the first time Land Monopoly, the holding up of the means of life by a few, and the exile of the people from their natural inheritance. At this point the Irish were first confronted by the greatest curse on earth - Capitalism. Later we find some of the early settlers inter-marrying with the Irish, although forbidden to do so, and combining to fight the hordes of land thieves that were continually arriving from that centre of civilisation - England.

We now arrive at what may be termed the age of blood in Ireland. As the outlawed Irish took advantage of every opportunity to wrest back their heritage from their oppressors, bloody encounters took place almost daily, until the formidable revolution of 1641, when all the Irish chiefs banded together under the banners of the O'Neills. Although beaten in many pitched battles, the Irish never, even down to 1917, admit that they are a conquered nation. Therefore an Irishman should never be called a "rebel" or spoken of as "disloyal."

The horrible atrocities committed by the soldiers of Coote, Munroe, and Maxwell - the children carried through the streets on the top of pikes (Coote liked such "frolics," as the "nits would become lice"). Then Cromwell, wading through the blood of the Irishmen, women and children, the deportations of children as slaves to the Indies, and later the "famines" in Queen Victoria's reign. Her poorhouses for the victims of her laws, the emigrant ships of English capitalists, the savage evictions, the de-population of whole counties, trade wilfully destroyed, cities like Dublin and towns like Drogheda impoverished and crumbling to ruins. Filthy slums, and the thousand and one evils that follow capitalism in its lusts for conquest and gold, and its attempts to colour the map of the world red.

In Ireland there are many kinds of schools. Some for the children of the wealthy, others for the middle class, and the type known as "National," which is the only means of education for the children of the working class. Also Industrial Schools, or Baby Farms, under clerical managers and subsidised with Government money.

Tolstoi said: "The rich will do everything for the poor except get off their backs." Some clergyman said: "Give me the child until it is twelve years old and you can do what you like with the man." The result of both sayings can be seen all over Ireland at present and in the past.

In the "National Schools" under Protestant control, if the children are not taught to forget they are Irish, they are certainly not taught to remember that they are...!

The "rich men" of the landlord class flood the cottages of their poor tenants of all denominations with books relating to "How We Won Our Empire," and the Irish are just mentioned as "poor Fenians, who used bombs against life or - what is more sacred in the landlord's eyes - property.

The above are some of the means used by the "classes" to complete the conquest of Ireland. To prevent any chance of unity amongst the young men they are enticed into semi-religious and secret societies like the A.O.H. and Orange Institutions. The effect of this can be seen in Belfast, where even the workers are stampeded from Trade Unions by their cunning capitalist masters, and the religious ticket is used as a trump card when the workers' demand gets too insistent.

The Industrial Schools, where so much per head is paid for the support of the "first offenders" by the Government, seem to be a sort of semi-military affair. Some of them have as many as six hundred acres of land attached. All profits made on the farms or in the workshops go into the pockets of the "poor clerics." In order to have three years' extra cheap labour - or slavery - one of these institutions petitioned the Government to extend the time for leaving - eighteen years was the old term - to twenty-one years. The Government refused, as it is estimated that about sixty per cent joins the British Army or Navy. It is not exactly known how much per skull is paid by the Government for this cannon fodder.

In the agricultural districts the children of the labouring class are taken away from school at the age of ten years, and sent to work with farmers. In Co. Wicklow the wages paid these boy slaves run to something like three shillings per week and a couple of cans of buttermilk.... The worst piece of land in the district is picked for the labourers' cottage and plot.

This muddling of the children's brains and trafficking in their bodies will have to cease, as all over the world the workers are heaving at their chains, and if reform does not come, and come quickly, then the slave teachers and slave holders will have Revolution.

There is one class who refuse to learn from past history, the rumblings of the present, or the threat of the future, and that class is the governing class of England and their blood relations, the Ascendancy Party in Ireland. After over a thousand years of "kingly" and aristocratic tyranny, slaughtered in their wars for pride and power, the survivors were always sent back to their dens to starve like dogs. The people of France (the Glorious Mob) overthrew their oppressors, and the soldiers, sons of the people, helped to pull the tyrants down; and all the crowned despots of Europe banded together in "massed formation" to extinguish the spirit of Republicanism that blazed through France.

The pious tale and "holy blunder" that starvation, slums, and all the misery that is brought by man on mankind is the "Will of God" was brushed aside by the intelligent "mob," and the clerical hirelings who taught it were swung to the lanterns, side by side with their noble pay-masters.

This horrid, false doctrine was preached in Ireland from '98 to black '47, and when the rotten tenements crushed to death the Dublin poor in the ruins of Church Street, the mummery still continued: "Jesus Wept?"

America, when her breakfast table was about to be taxed, took no chance with fairy tales, but promptly hustled the tax-gatherers out of the country - at the point of the bayonet.

When the people of Portugal got tired of eating black bread and garlic they sent all the non-producers packing - Manoel and his nobles, court favourites, and all the rest of the thimble-riggers who swarm round a court like flies round a dead sheep.

The starving workers of Spain have made many attempts, and are still trying to throw the royal yoke from off their shoulders, but the mass of the people are uneducated. Out of a population of nearly twenty millions only about seven millions can read or write, therefore the soldiers still fire on the people. Education is solely in the hands of the clerics. When Francisco Ferrer introduced his system of education known as the Modern Schools some years ago, he was immediately placed against the wall and shot. The workers of Spain will present the bill in the proper quarter in due time!

Fintan Lalor laid it down in 1848 "That Ireland, up to the sun and down to the centre, was vested in the Irish people." The buying out of large estates by foreign clerical refugees should be stopped in Ireland. There are thousands of Irish evicted tenants who cannot get a sod of ground or a place to lay their heads in their native land. The landlords encourage refugees in preference to the native Irish.

Looking back at the past, and what is happening every morning of their lives, it can be distinctly seen that what is known to Socialists as the "Class War" is everywhere around them at present. The efforts of the ruling class are to rivet the chains of slavery more and more firmly upon the limbs and minds of the working class. To keep on forever the system of the master and the slave, to break their spirit with hard, never-ending drudgery, and to cripple and be-cloud their brains with false doctrines.

It is for the purpose of bringing before the workers of Ireland their true position. To organise and educate them, to link them up in one solid mass. To separate the exploited from the exploiters, and to demand the right to live, there must be access to the land for all the people who live on it, and to all the mineral wealth and means of life it contains. They must be used for the people and by the people in order to abolish slums and wage-slavery, and to end for ever the so-called "civilisation" which is seen on every hand to-day....

For demanding reforms such as are above outlined, the workers of every land have had their "Bloody Sundays" and their murderous "Mountjoys."

For such ideals are the Socialists of the world working, and every man and woman who receives a week's pay - whether they earn it with their heads or hands - should swing into the movement. And help to banish capitalists from off the face of the earth.

During the past seventy years it is estimated that something like over four millions of people were driven by landlordism and English land laws from the shores of Ireland. Whole counties like Meath are turned into grazing ranches to breed bullocks for the English markets, and to provide happy hunting grounds for the fox hunting gentry, ladies, and "sporting" clergy. The only defenders of this system are the people who are the cause of it. Their argument is that Meath would not produce crops, it would not be fit for tillage, etc. About forty years ago abundant crops of all descriptions were raised all over the county. The labourers' cottage plots, which are taken from corners of the ranches, produce splendid vegetables, oats, wheat, and all kinds of human food.

All attempts made by the now defunct United Irish League to obtain land for the people were always defeated by the nobility, graziers, fox hunters, and money-grabbing clerics. Drogheda had a population of about thirty thousand people forty years ago, it is now reduced to something like eleven thousand, and half of them are living in semi-starvation. Navan, Kells, and Oldcastle are all in the same condition. The slums of Drogheda are on about the same level as Dublin. One of the streets known as the "Tunnel" is the pick of the basket. The people live in cubicles about twelve feet long by six wide. There they are left to stew; there is nothing more to be squeezed from them. A people starving in the midst of the most beautiful and fertile country in Europe. The town is beautifully situated near the mouth of the Boyne, and has many magnificent religious institutions in and around, all well worthy of a visit - especially the "Tunnel." There man and woman can be seen in their primitive state.

The wages of the agricultural labourers before the war were ten shillings per week, and from the cradle to the grave they have no other prospects. The "Ring" regulates that branch of domestic economy.

On their hunting expeditions the landlords are generally accompanied by a bodyguard of local clergymen, splendidly mounted. The duty of this guard is to see that the land-hungry people does not interfere with the hunt, and so the "lord's annointed" tramples the teachings of Davitt into the grass ranches of Meath. Nearly all the clerics are cattle dealers and graziers, so it pays them to keep the land under grass, and the people under heel in the back lanes of the wretched towns. In Meath the "Golden Bullock" is the idol, the god and man is the beast! The women and children, the "images of God," weep and die in misery in their dreadful dwellings.

All sorts of tricks are invented to rob the poor, and a voice is never raised on their behalf. One sky-pilot, to make money, started a private cemetery, and made a small fortune on the dead bodies of the people. Several poor widows were robbed of their bit of land, their only means of life by graziers, and not one offered to defend or help them. The story of "Royal Meath," if written up, would whip Sinclair's Jungle.

It appears something similar is going on in other counties also, as the Dublin papers reported a Co. Galway case in 1914 where thirty-five people were sent to jail and over two hundred injured by the police as the result of the country people driving a reverend gentleman's stock off a grazing ranch.

The above will illustrate the powerful combine the workers of Ireland have to contend against. As long as the workers seek "leaders" from the ranks of the landlord class or gombeen middle-class shopkeepers, so long shall they be kept in ignorance and slavery. In every movement in Irish history this type of man always betrayed the masses of the people. O'Connell sacrificed the votes of the forty shilling freeholders for what is termed "Catholic Emancipation," which was the right of the middle class to send their sons to colleges, so as to become counsellors, doctors, clergymen, judges, and other well-paid jobs under the Government. But for the poor men Dan did nothing! When the flag-wagging and cheering was over they went back to their mud cabins, and found themselves in as bad a condition as ever. The slave teaching that was breathed into them enabled them to die like spaniels when the famine years came, instead of fighting like men against their oppressors. Every time Dublin Castle showed its teeth O'Connell ran away. He had no intention of fighting for Ireland! It was Rome he was thinking about, not Dublin: just as to-day men like T.P. O'Connor and Redmond are thinking of London.

The toilers of Ireland will have to seek leaders from their own class. The road to the social emancipation of the working class is not the road pointed out by reactionaries like O'Connell and Redmond, but by men like Fintan Lalor and James Connolly, who taught the workers never to trust the "great" -

"The great who trod our fathers down
Who steal our children's bread
Whose hand of greed is stretched to rob
The living and the dead."

The majority of the people in Ireland called "Nationalists," for the last thirty years or so, were trained, drilled, and drugged into the belief that when they obtained what was called Home Rule all their troubles would be over. The land, in fact, would flow with milk and honey, that the "leaders," like some of the medicine men of old, "wi' hocus-pocus rod in hand," had only to wave it in College Green and bread and meat would fall on the tables of the poor, the festering slums would disappear, the infants would cease to die of starvation, no one would be hungry, and no one would be dry. Then in 1914 they woke up and found that Home Rule was another toy balloon of the Liberals, and the great fights between the Orange Capitalist leader Carson and the middle class Nationalist-gombeen-capitalist Redmond were only shams to keep the two "mobs" amused, and that in the meantime the taxation was raised from nine millions to nearly twenty-five millions, and the employers of labour had declared war on the workers by dismissing large numbers of men to force them by starvation into the army. To such had the policy of the great Irish leader brought the ignorant people who trusted him and his hireling crowd.

Capitalism is international; it knows no boundaries, it respects no creed, it has one god - gold. All races it exploits; it has no mercy on white, black, or brown. Wherever there is money to be made and people to be enslaved it fastens on like a vampire and bleeds all to death. It is a menace to the human race, and if not crushed will eventually destroy the little there is left of civilisation. It kills and starves millions every year, it drives hundreds of thousands of young girls on the streets. It fills the jails, work-houses, and lunatic asylums with its victims, and when Labour men stand out to fight for their rights it murders them on the streets with rifle and bayonet.

The cosmopolitan millionaires betrayed the American Republic. Its Goulds, Vanderbilts, Thaws, and Carnegies turned the ballot box into a farce, and the free Republic into a capitalistic State. Their agents were sent to every country in the world to recruit wage-slaves, so as to overflow the American market, and then they pitted the different nationalities against each other to lower wages. They turned Chicago and other cities into industrial hells as each band of new arrivals were forced by hunger to undersell the workers already engaged.

To keep their slaves in subjection the capitalists then mobilised and equipped the Pinkerton Police, and hired the States militia to carry out its dreadful work. In 1877 this combination was turned on the Chicago workmen with Gatling guns, rifles, revolvers, and bayonets, and the leaders, after a mock trial by hired judges and juries, hanged. The Lemont quarrymen, in 1885, got the same treatment. The Swedish, German, Polish, and Irish workmen were shot like dogs on the street.

In Republican France, if the workers kick against their conditions, they are conscripted to break the strike, and shot if they don't obey.

In "Colonial Home Rule" - Australia, Canada, and South Africa - it is the same.

People who remember the last Boer War know that it cost the lives of something like thirty thousand British soldiers and two hundred and fifty million pounds in hard cash! For what? To free the Uitlanders, the English miners, from the tyranny of the Boers. That was the reason given at the time, and London got drunk with delight and mobbed men like Lloyd George and John Burns as pro-Boers because of their opinions. On July 5th, 1914, twenty strikers - "Uitlanders," English men, miners - were shot dead on the streets of Kleinfontein and two hundred were wounded. English Dragoons and Boers were used by the gold-bug capitalists in this slaughter.

England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland have had their bloody strike scenes. The revolt of the Dublin workers under James Larkin against the shocking conditions under which they existed, their small wages, and tottering tenement houses, are all fresh yet, at least in the worker's mind. The weird collection of capitalists, who banded together to crush the workers, should be a lesson to wage-slaves of all shades of politics and religions. It included Nationalists, Orangemen, Freemasons, A.O.H., Quakers, slum landlords, publicans, peelers, and clergymen of various derominations - all shareholders in capital. Troops of lancers were held in Dublin Castle Yard, ready to ride the workers down if Murphy's "black hundreds" showed any signs of being overpowered. Several men were batoned to death, and one girl was shot by a "free labourer." Yet the Irish Transport Union is still alive, and Liberty Hall, the Citizen Army, and James Connolly will be remembered in Irish history when all the foul brood who tried to crush and enslave the workers will be forgotten.

Such is the history of capitalism the world over. It blooms like a green bay tree under monarchs, "Home Rule States," and so-called Republics. It is the "International Magna Charta" of the rich to exploit the poor. On the Continent any church that touches it comes to grief when the workers rise against its tyranny. One enemy it alone fears and has a right to fear - an enemy that, sooner or later, in the great push for human liberty will deal it its death blow, and that enemy is Socialism.

In his book, New Ireland, written many years ago, the late Mr. A.M. Sullivan states it was the "drillings by the light of the moon" that forced the English Government to bring in the Irish Land Acts. After their terrible experiences during the strike some of the most advanced of the Dublin workmen advocated the arming of the working class, so as to be in a position to defend themselves from future assaults of police and other hirelings of capital.

As the carrying of arms some months later became legal owing to the landing of German rifles at Larne and elsewhere for the use of Carson's Orange Volunteers, the Dublin workers seized their opportunity, got fully equipped, and under the command of Captain White and Jim Larkin, formed themselves into the Citizen Army, with headquarters at Liberty Hall. At the same time an armed force sprang up known as the Irish National Volunteers. The movement spread rapidly over Ireland, and, at least, the Dublin regiments took to their work like ducks to water. They drilled hard, marched hard, and it appears, a goodly number of them thought hard....

Now a man of the working class is never really dangerous to the capitalist class until he begins to think. When he combines thought with action, gets an idea into his head. A ball cartridge into the breech of his rifle, and his proper direction, then it may be said he had passed another milestone on the road to freedom....

The butchery on Bachelor's Walk by the "King's Own" caused a big rush of recruits to the Volunteer movement, which had begun to assume even mightier proportions, both in numbers and ideals, than the Volunteers of 1782.

The Charlemont and Grattan Volunteers were organised purely in the interests of the Irish capitalist class, although Ireland then as now, was starved and robbed. Their capitalist leaders had the buttons of the rank and file engraved "For King and country." When their aristocratic "leaders" obtained their object, "Free Trade," they deserted the men, and the eloquent Grattan called on the British Government to disarm the "rabble."

As England was engaged at the time crushing the American and French "Huns," and had no troops to spare for Ireland, Grattan and Charlemont could have declared Ireland a free country; but they were true to their class and sold their followers, as Redmond and others tried to do with the Volunteers of 1914. Then came what is known as the "split," the drugged National school element, which was in the majority, ranged themselves under the "Party" banner - the Union Jack - and the minority, the educated men, lined up under the tri-colour as the Irish Volunteers. The leaders of the "Nationals," instructed their followers to fasten their eyes on the ends of the earth, whereas the Irish Volunteers were drilled into the idea that an Irishman's first call is - Ireland.

Thus was frustrated any plans to deport the Volunteers to the trenches of France or elsewhere as a blood-offering to English Imperiaism and International Capitalism.

Towards the close of 1915 and the opening of 1916 the Government offices in Dublin and private employers introduced "economic Conscription," and threw large numbers of men (married and single) out of their employment, to starve on the streets, or join the Army. The separation allowance was the only way the married women could obtain bread for their children - bread purchased with a father's blood - Irish aliens starving on the streets of the country they were born in, and strangers singing, feasting, drinking, and roaring in the soldiers' "rests" and "buffets," attended by fat women of the capitalists, all in full view of the hungry alien - that was Dublin in 1916!

On Easter Monday, April 24th, the city was taken possession of by the Republican Volunteers and the Citizen Army. The first shots fired by the Socialist commandant's men sounded the death knell of O'Connell's slavish doctrine that "liberty is not worth the shedding of a single drop of blood," and Redmondite Imperialism was destroyed forever amidst the smoke and fire of Dublin.

The landing of the Army Corps of English conscripts - men who "loved their country so well" that the English lords had to force them to fight for it. The lootings and brutal murders which took place at their hands will go down to posterity as an example of British pluck, and to what an extent the blood lust will carry sons of workers when commanded by their landlords and rabid Orange generals.

The execution of the Republican leaders, of course, followed. England never yet spared a fallen enemy, especially if it happened to be Irish. The volleys at dawn in the jails and barrack yards of Dublin awoke the people of Ireland up to the fact that the Ascendancy Party, who hung and pitchcapped their fathers in '98 were still unchanged in 1916.

The attitude of at least one capitalist journal in Dublin will be remembered by the Irish workers, as it screamed, like a vulture, for the blood of the wounded labour leader, James Connolly, and Sean McDermott. Connolly was carried out on a stretcher, propped against the wall and shot. And then the cry of "Halt!" was started by the same paper that was screaming "Blood!" a few hours before.

The "Irish Party" (that was) are now telling the country how they saved Ireland from conscription after the rebellion - as they state the Government was going to put it in force after all the men were shot or jailed. The following extract from Mr. A.W. Samuels's speech in the House of Commons, and reported in the Irish Times on Thursday, March 8, 1917, should silence Mr. Redmond's "watch dogs." Mr. Samuels stated: "Another effect of the rebellion was that we had lost 150,000 to 200,000 conscripts from Ireland, who would have been in the first ranks of the fighting men of the world, etc."

The "one bright spot" on which all lovers of freedom have now their eyes fixed is Russia. After centuries of tyranny and foul religious superstition, with the mass of the people kept in ignorance owing to clerical control in the schools, all progress denied them by Church and State, and the execution of thousands of young men and women students, and the exile of thousands more to the horrors of Siberia, Russia has now thrown the twin tyrants in the dust, has overthrown Tsardom and all its works, and has set an example to the world by freeing the land from private "ownership" and handing it over to its rightful owners - the people. Private ownership of land is the cause of all the misery and hunger in the world, and every country should follow Russia's example.

If the fields of England and Ireland were in the hands of the people, the dread of famine would not be staring the working class in the face as it is today. England's real enemies are her landlord class. The working class are poor because they are ignorant, and their masters keep them ignorant in order to keep them in servitude and poverty.

It is plain to all people that capitalism is a ghastly failure. The cut-throat competition on which it thrives has plunged the world into dreadful wars. To see who will be the master of the world's markets is the cause of the slaughter in Europe at present, and unless Capitalism is destroyed wars will never cease.

Opponents of Socialism make all sorts of charges against it and the men who expound its doctrines. They tell all the dreadful things that will happen when it comes amongst them, while all the time the dreadful things they imagine Socialism will bring surround them every where whilst they are speaking, and are, in fact, the very evils which the Socialists are trying to destroy.

The workers of Ireland who read this brief review of the things that happened in the past, the present, and the plots which the capitalists are laying for the future, can plainly see that no solid or sane State can be built on a foundation which is capitalism. They can see that under a Monarch, a Republic, or a "Colonial Home Rule" State the workers are still slaves, and can be shot, batoned, or jailed under either of the three Governments. That is the reason "New Russia" is getting built on a foundation from which capitalism is totally eliminated - the reason the workers of that mighty country have set up a Workers' Government as the first step to a Socialist Republic; and the capitalist agents who are now compiling repom about the mines, etc., of Russia, with a view to exploiting Russian slaves when the war is over, will get the surprise of their lives from a people who will build up a Co-operative Common wealth in which capitalism will have no place.

Workers of the world, "Watch Russia."

The people of all countries will learn one great lesson from the war, and that is they must produce all necessaries of life within their own boundaries. To do this the land must be taken from the few who have it locked up as "private property," and put into cultivation for the use of all. The submarines and flying machines have made big navies useless, except to smash them up and turn them into ploughs with which to till the land and grow food for all. The young men and women of Ireland should join up without delay, and push on the progressive movements which are now spreading through the land. Fat men, when they are not at luncheon, are discussing how many links they will let into the Irish dog's chain! What sort of a sop or drug will they throw him this time? All no use! Freedom is what the wolf-dog wants; freedom to rove over his four green fields - and that freedom he will have to get.

This island is too small for Feudalism and Freedom. One or the other must go. "Land and Liberty" is the motto of the Russian workers - it should also do for Ireland - for the world. But an Irish Republic must not be built on industrialism or capitalism, for that would be slavery again - 1913 would repeat itself, but a Republic built on Co-operation, all for each, and each for all. For this all true Irishwomen and Irishmen should work, strive and, if necessary, fight for. Tri-colour and Red Flag all pushing on Freedom's Road - stepping from Darkness into the Dawn.