Doors and windows were hung with thick, dark-red portieres, and the walls
were almost as white as DeValera's face.
"Pardon us for speaking Irish," he apologized. "We forget. Now first of
all, we will go over the questions you sent me. I have written the answers.
They must appear as I have put them down. That is the condition on which
the interview takes place."
Did Sinn Fein plan immediate revolution? The president ran a fountain pen
under the small, finely written lines as he remarked in an aside that he
was not a writer but a mathematician. No. The sudden set of the president's
jaw indicated that this man who had fought in the 1916 rebellion till even
his enemies had praised him, was the man who had decided there would be no
reception at the bridge. No. There would be no armed revolt till all
peaceable methods had failed.
If Sinn Fein succeeded in getting separation, would it establish a
bolshevistic government? DeValera returned that he was not sure what
bolshevism is. As far as he understood bolshevism, Sinn Fein was not
bolshevistic. But perhaps, by the way, bolshevism had been as
misrepresented in the American press as Sinn Fein. Right there, I took
exception and said that from his own point of view I did not see what good
slurring the American press would do his cause. Immediately he answered as
if only the principal phase of the matter had occurred to him: "But it's
true.
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