of a Church of Ireland rector from Roscommon, helped create an ethos in the early days that attracted a number of unionists into its ranks. Remarkably, these included the Rev. Richard Kane, Grand Master of the Belfast Orange Lodge and organiser of the Anti-Home Rule Convention of 1892. But from the beginning there was an unresolved conflict between non-political rhetoric and the nationalism implicit in the League's revivalist project. With the aid of Eugene O'Growney (author Simple Lessons in Irish) Eoin MacNeill, Thomas O'Neill Russell and others, the League was launched in the wake of an address Hyde delivered to the Irish National Literary Society, on 25 November 1892: ‘"The Necessity for De-Anglicising Ireland’". Citing Giuseppe Mazzini (the Italian nationalist who had been the inspiration for the rare language enthusiast among the Young Irelanders, Thomas Davis), Hyde argued that "in Anglicising ourselves wholesale we have thrown away with a light heart the best claim we have to nationality". The organisation developed from Ulick Bourke's earlier Gaelic Union and became the leading institution promoting the Gaelic Revival, organising Irish classes and student immersions in the Gaeltacht, and publishing in Irish. The League's first newspaper was An Claidheamh Soluis (The Sword of Light) and its most noted editor was Pádraig Pearse. The motto of the League was Sinn Féin, Sinn Féin amháin (Ourselves, Ourselves alone). Early campaigns Among the League's few campaign successes in its first decade was acceptance by the Post Office of parcels and letters addressed in Irish, and the recognition of St. Patrick's Day as a national holiday. With national feeling heightened in part by the Boer War, membership increased from 1900. The number of branches rose from 43 in 1897 to 600 in 1904 with a membership of 50,000. A more substantial victory followed: in 1904 Irish was introduced into the national school curriculum. The Catholic church, however, was not an early ally. The clergy had played a significant role in the decline of the language. In the National schools they had punished children for speaking it (a legacy, in part, of the Irish-language missionary activity of the Protestant churches). The national cause Hyde declared that "The Irish language, thank God, is neither Protestant nor Catholic, it is neither a Unionist nor a Separatist." Although the League took this non-political principle seriously enough to decline participation in the unveiling of a 1798 centenary monument to Wolfe Tone, much