Days of Fear

"To-night my head aches ... Those first days of hungerstriking are cruel days. Yet the hardest thing of all to bear is that there are no meal-hours. Jail life hinges on the three meals. I think I have been sleeping ... With the day, who cares? ... Hunger striking is simple, after all ... Just fasting and no pain ... no pain ... But the heart stops. That is the trouble. They say men have fasted for many days ... but when they were dying they were free to fast. We must be glad to die. I was ... yesterday. Now it seems hopeless ... What do they care about a death, the brutes ..." One of the strangest diaries ever published - the day to day journal of one who took part in the hunger strike in Mountjoy Jail, Dublin in 1920. This is a record of spiritual strength, of reckless suffering, and of frank cowardice - something all men and women serving an ideal have tasted. It was written during one of those periodic protests for national liberty in Ireland in which passionate self-sacrifice seemed to become the temporary characteristic of a whole people. Poignantly human this is a story as full of gentleness as of fear, as full of despair as of faith.