Apocalyptic bloodlusts in expectation of the redrawing of the political map of Europe were two-a-penny at the turn of the twentieth century. As British politicians debated the best way to manage the empire – simultaneously near the peak of its territorial expansion and under pressure from ambitious European powers – the New Imperialists conceived of these rivalries as a pseudo-Darwinian struggle for the survival. Spurred on by the Boer War, Irish political debate was infected with this discourse, the moth-balled adage ‘England's difficulty, Ireland's opportunity’ emerging freshly laundered for the new century. ‘Clovis’, writing in the United Irishman, prophesied a struggle of magnificent proportions:

The Christological metaphors that became so characteristic of Pearse's later oratory are evident here, implicitly transfiguring Parnell, an earlier chosen one, into a sacrificed Christ. Packed with presentiment, this passage was also a call for clarity amid the confusion of turn of the century Irish politics. The Irish parliamentary party, although still divided, remained the dominant political force in Ireland.