This form of hunger strike was further used under the Brehon Law as compulsion to obtain a request. For example, the Leinstermen on one occasion fasted on St. Columkille till they obtained from him the promise that an extern King should never prevail against them.

It is interesting to note that this form of direct action was adopted because there was no legislative machinery to enforce justice. These laws were merely a collection of customs attaining the force of law by long usage, by hereditary habit, and by

[1]Tripartite Life of St. Patrick, CLXXVII, p. 218. [2]Ibid. CLXXVII, p. 418. [3]Ibid. CLXXVII, p. 556. public opinion. Our resort to this weapon grew out of the same situation. The legislative machinery, while empowered to give us redress, failed to function, and so we adopted the fast.

The institution of fasting on a debtor still exists in the East. It is called by the Hindoos "sitting dharna."

The hunger strike was continuously used in Russia by prisoners to obtain more humane practices toward them. Kropotkin 1 cites an instance in which women prisoners hunger struck to get their babies back. If a child was born to a woman during her imprisonment the babe was immediately taken from her and not returned. Mothers struck and got their babies returned to them.

He cites another successful example in Rharkoff prison in 1878 when six prisoners resolved to hunger strike to death if necessary to win two things-to be allowed exercise and to have the sick prisoners taken out of chains.

There are innumerable instances of hunger strikes, even to death, in Russian prison history. But more often the demands of the strikers were won.. Breshkovsky[2] tells of a strike by 17 women against outrage, which elicited the desired promises from the warden.

As early as 1877 members of the Land and Liberty Society s imprisoned for peaceful and educational propaganda, in the Schlusselburg Fortress for political prisoners, hunger struck against inhuman prison conditions and frightful brutalities and won their points.

During the suffrage campaign in England this weapon was used for the double purpose of forcing the release of imprisoned militant suffragettes, and of compelling the British government to act.

Among the demonstrations was a revival of the ancient Irish

[1]See In Russian and French Prisons, P. Kropotkin.

[2]For Russia's Freedom, by Ernest Poole,-An Interview with Breshkovsky.

[3]See The Russian Bastille, Simon O. Pollock. custom by Sylvia Pankhurst, who in addition to her hunger strikes within prison, "fasted on" the doorstep of Premier Asquith to compel him to see a deputation of women on the granting of suffrage to English women. She won.

Irish prisoners have revived the hunger strike to compel either release or trial of untried prisoners and have Lyon. As I write, almost a hundred Irish prisoners detained by England for alleged nationalist activities, but not brought to trial, hunger struck to freedom. As a direct result of this specific hunger strike England has promised a renovation of her practices in dealing with Irish rebels.