From The Clan-na-Gael Journal, February 27, 1915.

It has been repeatedly asked by friend and foe, what is the Clan-na-Gael? The answer in brief is: The Clan-na-Gael does not interfere in religion or American party politics. It is founded on the lines and policy of the United Irishmen, whose grand principle was “the union of all classes of Irishmen,” and their object, as defined by Tone, “To break the connection with England, the never-failing source of all our political evils, and to win the independence of my country.”

It believes “that every people have the God-given right to govern themselves,” and has learned from the pages of history, as well as from sad and bitter experience, “that never lived the nation yet could rule another well.” It has never done aught that would interfere with the duties required by its members as American citizens.

It recognises the fact that the people of Ireland are the sole judges of the form of government best suited to their wants and wishes, and consequently has never sought to force its policy upon them. But believing that a republican form of government, with full civil and religious liberty guaranteed to all its inhabitants, the same as we in America enjoy, is the best ever devised by man or blessed by God, therefore, the Clan-na-Gael shall continue its good work “until such time as Ireland takes her place among the nations of the earth,” and one of her sons becomes thereby qualified to write the epitaph of the murdered patriot whose birth the Clan-na-Gael now commemorates.

When this is done the Clan-na-Gael will be represented at the unveiling in Ireland’s now widowed capital, and then, but not till then, shall its mission be fulfilled.