Preface of James Connolly:Portrait of a Rebel Father (1935)

JAMES CONNOLLY

AMONG the sixteen men who were executed after the failure of the Irish Insurrection of 1916 there was no nobler or more heroic figure than James Connolly. It was not necessary to share the faith for which he died in order to realise what a magnanimous and valiant man was lost to the world on the day on which, wounded and unable to walk, he was carried from his bed on a stretcher and propped up in a chair to face the firing-squad. Criticism was silent in the presence of that last tragic picture; and, when it became known that the man about to die, on being asked by the priest who attended him: “Will you say a prayer for the men about to shoot you?” had replied: “I will say a Prayer for all brave men who…