Here, in Cork district, you have in combination all the dangers which war can inflict.

We hope that the plain people - the labourers and small farmers - will take this opportunity of coming together and working out the National programme.

The economic and social problems would tend to become, like the military situation, more and more difficult as time went on and we became more and more isolated.

When we have done our best, we can, as a united people, take whatever may befall with calm courage and confidence that this old nation will survive and if death should come to many of us, death is not the end.

Could he not find in his heart the generosity to acknowledge that there is a small nation that stood alone not for one year or two, but for several hundred years against aggression; that endured spoliations, famines, massacres in endless succession; that was clubbed many times into insensibility, but that each time on returning [to] consciousness took up the fight anew; a small nation that could never be got to accept defeat and has never surrendered her soul?

All history is man's efforts to realise ideals.

If there is to be any hope of prosperity for this country it is by reversing that policy which made us simply the kitchen garden for supplying the British with cheap food.