freeman's journalal, unfortunately, and the paper. for some reason, his biographers have left it to one side. american leader john deboy was the key figure behind the 1916 rising that started a chain reaction that ended in the irish free state in 1922, but of equal importance, i would argue, were the political aims adopted by the president, woodrow wilson, as the u.s. entered the great war in 1917. and i quote one of his speeches. no nation should seek to extend its policy over any other nation or people, but every people should be left free to determine its own policy, its own way of development, unhindered, unthreatened, unafraid, little along with the great and the powerful. i am proposing government by consent of the government. now, wilson did not have ireland in mind when he said this, but he created an international framework in which an independent ireland was a reasonable demand. as a considerable number of new states took shape around the end of the war. in fact, a third of our european partners are states that were founded somewhere between 1917 and 1919, '20, '21. we were, i suppose, founded in a form