Preface: The Historic Case for Irish Independence

IN PREFACE AND IN PROTEST

WRITERS of good books and writers of bad books, according to their skill, shape their work as an architect shapes a building. In the building to which this protest is a preface an important stone near the pinnacle has been chipped away; and all the pinnacle itself, which was the crown toward which the building ascended, has been shorn off. Unfortunately, it is of no avail to protest against the vandalism: it is only necessary to indicate it; and to wait for better days of which the pinnacle might have given a hint and expressed a hope.

D.F.

Baile Atha Cliath,
Lá Bealtaine, 1918