In this debate he was an Irish soldier pleading with Parliament for Ireland in the name of Irish soldiers--who had responded to the call to arms because, as he said, they were led to believe that a new and better and brighter chapter was about to open in the relations of Great Britain and Ireland.
"I do not believe that there is a single member of any party in this House who is prepared to get up and say that in the past the government and treatment of Ireland by Great Britain have been what they should have been.

Mistakes, dark, black, and bitter mistakes, have been made.

A people denied justice, a people with many admitted grievances, the redress of which has been long delayed.

On our side, perhaps, in the conflict and in the bitterness of contest, there may have been things said and done, offensive if you will, irritating if you will, to the people of this country; but what I want to ask, in all simplicity, is this, whether, in face of the tremendous conflict which is now raging, whether, in view of the fact that, apart from every other consideration, the Irish people, South as well as North, are upon the side of the Allies and against the German pretension to-day, it is not possible from this war to make a new start ?--whether it is not possible on your side, and on ours as well, to let the dead past bury its dead, and to commence a brighter and a newer and a friendlier era between the two countries?
Why cannot we do it?
Is there an Englishman representing any party who does not yearn for a better future between Ireland and Great Britain?
There is no Irishman who is not anxious for it also.

Why cannot there be a settlement?
Why must it be that, when British soldiers and Irish soldiers are suffering and dying side by side, this eternal old quarrel should go on ?....
"If there ought to be an oblivion of the past between Great Britain and Ireland generally, may I ask in God's name the First Lord of the Admiralty [Sir Edward Carson] why there cannot be a similar oblivion of the past between the warring sections in Ireland?
All my life I have taken as strong and as strenuous a part on the Nationalist side as my poor abilities would allow.