George A. Birmingham

“ Moreover Conroy’s immense wealth, when he chose to use it, enabled him to get things done for him very quietly. He could secure the delivery of goods which he ordered in unconventional ways, in unusual places. He could, for instance, by means of lavish expenditure and personal interviews, arrange to have guns put unobtrusively into innocent looking tramp steamers and transhipped from them in lonely places to the hold of the Finola. Whether the German Government had any idea of what was going on I do not know. ”

“ The Chief Secretary replied that he had no knowledge of the political opinions of the editor in question further than as they obtained expression in his paper. He appeared to be a strong Unionist.
Considering that O’Donovan had been in prison three times, and that papers edited by him had been twice suppressed by the Government, the Chief Secretary must have meant that he had no official knowledge of O’Donovan’s opinions. The distinction between knowledge and official knowledge is one of the most valuable things in political life. ”

“ She thinks it’s simply a dodge of the Government to spike our guns.”
It is curious that Moyne cannot help talking about guns, even when he’s afraid that somebody or other may really have one. He might, under the circumstances, have been expected to use some other metaphor. ”

“ And yet the absurdity of the thing prevents serious consideration.
The fact is that our minds are so thoroughly attuned to the commonplace that we have lost the faculty of imaginative vision of unusual things. ”