Author's Preface

It may surprise some people to learn that in 1915 this little
play was a recruiting poster in disguise. The British officer
seldom likes Irish soldiers; but he always tries to have a
certain proportion of them in his battalion, because, partly from
a want of common sense which leads them to value their lives less
than Englishmen do (lives are really less worth living in a poor
country), and partly because even the most cowardly Irishman
feels obliged to outdo an Englishman in bravery if possible, and
at least to set a perilous pace for him, Irish soldiers give
impetus to those military operations which require for their
spirited execution more devilment than prudence.

Unfortunately, Irish recruiting was badly bungled in 1915. The
Irish were for the most part Roman Catholics and loyal Irishmen,
which means that from the English point of view they were
heretics and rebels. But they were willing enough to go
soldiering on the side of France and see the world outside
Ireland, which is a dull place to live in. It was quite easy to
enlist them by approaching them from their own point of view. But
the War Office insisted on approaching them from the point of
view of Dublin Castle. They were discouraged and repulsed by
refusals to give commissions to Roman Catholic officers, or to
allow distinct Irish units to be formed. To attract them, the
walls were covered with placards headed REMEMBER BELGIUM. The
folly of asking an Irishman to remember anything when you want
him to fight for England was apparent to everyone outside the
Castle: FORGET AND FORGIVE would have been more to the point.
Remembering Belgium and its broken treaty led Irishmen to
remember Limerick and its broken treaty; and the recruiting ended
in a rebellion, in suppressing which the British artillery quite
unnecessarily reduced the centre of Dublin to ruins, and the
British commanders killed their leading prisoners of war in cold
blood morning after morning with an effect of long-drawn-out
ferocity. Really it was only the usual childish petulance in
which John Bull does things in a week that disgrace him for a
century, though he soon recovers his good humor, and cannot
understand why the survivors of his wrath do not feel as jolly
with him as he does with them. On the smouldering ruins of Dublin
the appeals to remember Louvain were presently supplemented by a
fresh appeal. IRISHMEN, DO YOU WISH TO HAVE THE HORRORS OF WAR
BROUGHT TO YOUR OWN HEARTHS AND HOMES? Dublin laughed sourly.

As for me I addressed myself quite simply to the business of
obtaining recruits. I knew by personal experience and observation
what anyone might have inferred from the records of Irish
emigration, that all an Irishman's hopes and ambitions turn on