Excerpt from An Appreciation of Padraic H. Pearse: First President of the Irish Republic

A new era is dawning over the world. Europe is awakening from the nightmare sleep of nations beneath kings, and Freedoms sacred fire is all aglow in the hearts of indi viduals and of peoples. Ireland's voice for freedom which has sounded incessantly through the dark ages of oppression to - dav rings louder and more hopeful. -three years ago the tricolor iof an Irish Republic was un furled to the breeze, and men beheld with jov the approach of their long expected redemp tion. It is naturalthat when the names of those who are hailed as the champions of lib ertv and Justice are Spoken of with the rever ence due to a hero-our thoughts should turn to him who was the soul of the Irish Republic, to him who died that Innisfail might live. Padraic Pearse might have been a noted bar rister, a world renowned educationalist, a pro found scholar. Or a faithful disciple of Apollo. Instead he turned his back on the dream he had shaped and set his face to walk another road and to do another work. To this end he W-vould devote the best energies of a gifted mind and a healthy body, to accomplish his ideal he would pay the supreme price. Unlike a Hamlet philosophising through an entire lifetime on the best means to use in following a dictate of conscience, once he determined that his coun'trv needed his service this son of the Gael went bravely and unflinchingly forward; Ireland's metropolis has the honor of being the birthplace of Padraic Pearse. He was one of a familv of four, two sisters and one brother, William, who also was' executed. His mother is an Irish Catholic, and his father was an Eng lishman and a convert to Catholicity. Having completed his secondary education in the Christian Brothers' school where he began the study of his native tongue, he entered on a higher course of studies in the Catholic Uni versity College then a teaching college for the ld Royal under the control of the Jesuit Fathers now a constituent college of the N a tional University of Ireland. Apparently no cleverer than the average student the years of his university training were distinguished onl}.r by a careful and diligent study of the Irish language and literature; and an earnestness which characterised him in all his endeavours. He graduated from this college receiving the degree of Bachelor of Arts, and shortly after wards was called to the Bar. An instructive and an impressive, without being oratorical, speaker had he practised his profession his suc cess was assured. Of a shy and retiring dis position his conversation with the casual ac quaintance on the ordinary topics of life was scant and prosaic. With the coterie of kindred.

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