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We might say that when thought and feeling are liberated normally and exerted outwardly in satisfactory achievement, self-expansion is found as the central drive of human nature. When, however, mental and emotional expression is thwarted so that no compensation is felt from effort, thought turns selfward and in this state of personalism sex becomes a centralized interest. In normal minds it can never take the place of accomplishment. It is to achievement, what sleep is to waking.

Such a philosophy makes clear the inventive drive of an Edison, the musical genius of a Wagner, or the impulse of a Magellan to circumnavigate the globe. Every normal ambition from the conquest of the jungle and the spanning of ancient rivers, to the discovery of radio and the invention of an aëroplane or the baking of a new kind of biscuit, is part of this process of self-expansion. Beyond all longings the urge to

release our own personalities is omnipotent and omnipresent. If sex were the central impulse of men's souls their feats of achievement would be unintelligible.

We shall not cure the sex frenzy of our age until we understand this law of self-expansion. We have seen sex inhibition fail. sex inhibition fail. It only bottled man's carnality in his heart or else made him abnormal and neurotic. We have seen theories of chastity break ineffectually against the basic nature of man and have sensed the confusion of an ill-adjusted civilization. And in conflict with the modern reaction we hear pointless tirades of those who are seeking to stem the tide. We shall not meet the issue until we learn that life must be shaped to man's nature—not man's nature to an artificial pattern of life. It will not disappear until we learn to give constructive release to the energies of man's spirit. A sex bogy and normal self-expansion cannot exist in the same world.

COLVIN'S SON

A. K. LAING

It was a point of pride with Colvin père,
To tell his customers that Colvin fils
Would join in selling soap and paint and grease
After his graduation, and would share

The office; but his wife had had a flair,-
Suppressed of course, for following The Fleece
With dream-born Jasons; and it found release
Now, in the person of the son and heir.

So Colvin filed a solemn caveat

Against the scribbling and the wish to roam.
He wrestled daily on a mental mat,

And slew his peace of mind, and wrecked his home

With futile operations to combat

The cool insistence of the chromosome.

GUNS FOR IRELAND

GEORGE WITTEN

E WERE Contraband, so didn't reply to the deep blasts of the liner's fog-horn. Instead I ordered the helmsman to throw the Frieda three points off her course, hoping the vessel ahead would clear us without even seeing us. After all she might be a destroyer, and not a liner. Her repeated threats of danger to all who lay in her path told me she was bearing down upon us.

I wasn't caring a damn about myself, though the British had put a price on my head, but Collins was in dire need of the guns we had on board. Precious machine-guns, rifles, pistols and ammunition that would help to free Ireland.

Thick clammy fog drifted in dense clouds over the Channel waters and added to the blackness of the night. Standing on the bridge of the Frieda, I had been straining my eyes to catch a glimpse of Eddystone Light; knew that we were thereabouts, but had nothing to tell us where the land lay. We had slipped out from behind Bolt Head, where we had been hiding, and I had ordered the man at the wheel to keep her nose pointed southwest, hoping to clear the Lizards, then make for the open sea. Our destination was the West Coast of Irelandanywhere on the West Coast that we could effect a landing.

The liner ahead kept booming its threatening warning. Water trickled

off my sou'wester and bleared my eyes, the fog was thick almost to the point of rain. The steward brought me a cup of hot tea with a shot of rum in it. I had been on the bridge for several hours and was chilled to the bone. Raising the cup to drink, I stopped, shoved the cup back into the hand of the steward and grabbed the megaphone.

"All hands on deck!" I yelled, and the crew scrambled out, as the black hulk of the liner pitched out of the fog not a hundred feet away.

The crash seemed certain. In the darkness it looked as though she would hit us amidships. Grabbing the wheel I threw the Frieda over to port and saw the liner turning also. The double movement threw us parallel and heading in opposite directions. Our sides scraped and I could hear the Frieda's plates being torn away as the liner ripped along. We keeled over until our starboard bulwarks sank below the water and part of the deck was awash. Thank all my lucky stars there was hardly any sea at all.

"Who are you?" yelled a voice from the liner's bridge.

"Frieda, merchantman out of Hull, bound for Cardiff!" I replied.

"Lay to!" he called, "and I'll take you into Plymouth!"

"Plymouth hell!" I said, and ordered full steam ahead.

Twisting and careening like a Saturday night drunk, the Frieda plunged into the darkness ahead. Soon we were lost in the fog, but we could hear the liner's signals as she tried to pick us up. Rescue meant loss of the cargo, imprisonment for the crew and death for me. For nearly an hour we plowed through the dark not knowing where we were going. Open water was what we wanted. But the constant tooting of fog-horns told we were still in crowded channels.

Two months before I had escaped from Londonderry Prison with a bullet through my thigh. Harassing Black and Tans, raiding arms'-stores and picking off a few policemen, were classed as murder by the British authorities. They tried me on twenty odd charges, found me guilty on all and sentenced me to death for each one.

Not wishing to die twenty or more times I had taken a saw, sent me in a loaf of bread by a lady friend, and cut my way out of the hospital ward of the prison. Mind you they were fattening me up so that I would be in good condition to die.

After my escape, Michael Collins calmly asked me to go back into the very place I had escaped from and bring out Frank Carty, who was also wounded and also under death sentence. Collins said this ought to be simple for me, having learned the ropes in my own escape.

It had always been the boast of the officials of Londonderry Prison that no prisoner had ever escaped from there. But I had made my escape without help. Hence this jolly little job which, of course, was all for the glory of Ireland.

My first move in releasing Carty was to learn the exact cell in which he was being held. This I did by sending girls, friends of the Republic, in to see him. I sent several at different times. I was afraid to trust to the ability of any one of them to determine just where he was located; also I wanted to establish communication with him so that he could cooperate with me when the time came. In this job I nearly lost my life and the first attempt was a complete failure. Londonderry is a prison within a prison. It is built on sloping ground and its rear wall, which is on the downhill side, is over sixty feet high. Backing up against the outside of this wall is a row of houses in which people lived who were reputed to be hostile to the Republic cause. Some were and some weren't.

In one of these houses I made my headquarters, and from its roof, when everything was ready, I tackled the high wall. My plan was to scale the two walls that surrounded the part of the prison in which Carty was held; then climb to his window, cut away the bars, and help him descend the rope.

Owing to the fact that Londonderry held a number of political prisoners, and because I had broken their boasted record, extra guards armed with machine-guns and searchlights were at every corner of the jail and in the sentry-boxes on top of the walls. They were taking no chances of losing another prisoner.

With my face blackened and wearing black gloves, so as not to throw off any reflection of light, and wearing heavily padded clothes to avoid being cut by broken glass cemented on top of the walls, I took a long

three quarter inch rope with a grappling-hook on the end, half a dozen steel saws, a brace of guns and a flashlight, and scaled the outer wall. This had to be done in clockwork time, for every few minutes a searchlight was played along the wall. Watching for the light to flash by I waited with the grappling-hook ready, crouching in the shadowsslowly the sweeping rays swung by. Then I threw up the hook, pulled till the rope hung taut and climbed up.

I got over the first wall without great difficulty, though my hands were bleeding from glass cuts and I had cut an ankle. Crouching against the inside of the wall, I waited to get my breath and to be sure that I had not aroused suspicion. Next I dodged around some outbuildings and up the slopes until I reached the inner wall. This was not such a tough proposition. It was only about twenty feet high and they seldom played the search-lights on it. I made the top of the wall all O. K. but, by ill luck, when I slid down the other side, I landed on top of a pile of garbage cans. There was a clatter and banging you could have heard a mile away. Immediately the whole prison force was racing all over the place. Search-lights and hand torches flashed in every direction.

There was no place to hide and to run would have meant certain capture. I did what I always do in a tight place, something bold and unexpected. Quickly doubling the rope up I shoved it into a garbage can. Then I whipped out my pocket torch and commenced flashing it around. It was so dark the black clothes attracted no attention, and no one suspected a man who stood out in the

middle of a prison yard flashing a torch around him, of being up to mischief. I scurried in and out among the guards, turning my light here and there. There were some trucks lined up against a workshop. In the bottom of one, there was a tarpaulin. Watching my opportunity, I turned out my flash and slid under the canvas.

Lying there I could hear the guards talking. They had made a thorough search in the prison yard and a count of the prisoners inside. Their conclusion was that the cans had been badly stacked and had fallen down of their own accord, perhaps helped by the wind.

For a couple of hours I stayed under the canvas. When the prison had settled down I crept out and went back for the rope; then I went to the part of the prison in which I had learned Carty was held.

Looking up to the third tier of windows I saw a face pressed against the bars. Then I counted the windows. Yes, that was Carty's cell, the eighth from the end. Unwinding the ball of twine, I threw the weighted end to him. He caught it and commenced pulling it up without giving me a chance to tie the end of the rope to it. This I attributed to nervousness and over-anxiety to escape.

Finally I got him to pull the rope up, but he didn't seem to know what to do with it. I had made careful plans and sent him full instructions and it annoyed me to find that he wasn't coöperating. After many gymnastics and signaling with my arms, I made him understand that I wanted the rope tied to one of the bars so that I could climb up to him. All this was taking time and daylight would soon be breaking.

His silence when I reached the window was the only part of my instructions that he carried out properly. I handed him a saw and we both set to work to cut away a couple of bars. Then I helped him out the window and down the rope. We had got over the inner wall without mishap, and I was congratulating myself that success was in sight. At the foot of the outer wall I whispered to him about the necessity of speed on account of the search-lights.

"All right," he said, in a voice that I knew was not Carty's.

"Who in the hell are you?" I asked.

"Joe Wright," he answered.

The curse of Cromwell! I felt like busting his head open. But then I realized that the mistake had been mine and not his. I could not blame him for taking an opportunity to escape from prison without asking questions. I afterward learned that he was a poor half-wit serving a short sentence for some petty offence, and would have been released in a couple of months' time. All I knew now was that he was an Irishman in jail, that it was breaking daylight and that there wasn't time to go back and find Carty.

"All right!" I said, as the light flashed by. "Get ready!" Then threw up the grappling-hook and scaled the wall.

Bracing my feet on broken glass, I took hold of the rope to pull him up, but the rope remained slack. Perhaps it was the height of the wall made him lose his nerve, for he stood there looking up.

"Grab hold!" I yelled, and saw the light sweeping toward us.

Then I felt his weight on the rope,

and pulling frantically, got him to the top just as the search-light hit us.

"Jump!" I yelled, and measuring my distance, leaped on to the roof below and sprained my ankle.

"I-I can't!" he cried, and stood there in the full rays of the light.

There was a splutter of machinegun fire as I hit the roof. I looked up and saw Wright topple over toward the inside of the wall. The next day the papers were full of his attempted escape and death. Poor fool, here was a case of a man losing his life through losing his nerve.

After this miserable failure I kept under cover for a couple of weeks. First to let things settle down and second to give my ankle a chance to heal. Fortunately the authorities had not connected Wright's death with an attempt to free Carty.

Through underground channels I found a jailer who could be bribed. For fifty pounds he agreed to take a saw and a ball of twine in to Carty and to give me the exact location of Carty's cell. But he stipulated that the escape must take place on his night off duty, so that there would be no suspicion against him. Needless to say he got his fifty pounds, and I got Carty out of jail with very little trouble on the second attempt.

It was these successes against the guards of Londonderry Prison, and the fact that I hold a shipmaster's papers that caused Michael Collins and the leaders of the Republic to select me to make the attempt to run the British blockade.

Michael Collins summoned me to Dublin. Dressed like a priest I got through the British lines and reported. Collins asked me if I could bring a ship-load of guns from Ger

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