Post #9612

I admit that I was Commandant General Commanding in Chief the forces of the Irish Republic which have been acting against you for the past week, and that I was President of their Provisional Government. I stand over all my acts and words done or spoken in those capacities. When I was a child of ten I went down on my bare knees by my bedside one night & promised God that I should devote my life to an effort to free my country. I have kept that promise. As a boy & as a man I have worked for Irish freedom, first among all earthly things. I have helped to organise, to arm, to train, and to discipline my fellow-countrymen to the sole end that, when the time came, they might fight for Irish freedom. The time, as it seemed to me, did come, and we went into the fight. I am glad we did. We seem to have lost. We have not lost. To refuse to fight would have been to lose; to fight is to win. We have kept faith with the past, & handed on a tradition to the future. - Pádraig Pearse, May 2nd 1916 Address to Court Martial