ABSTRACT
In many of the distant and strange corners of the world, Ireland is noted not as the Emerald Isle of Saints and Scholars, but as the home of the Irish Rebel. For the contemporary rebels, a new and orthodox image of the gunman has been fashioned by those whose power and position appear threatened by rebel aspirations. It is possible to examine in some depth a segment of Republican experience in order to begin at least an IRA rebel profile. The contemporary IRA is new only in so much as any long-lived organization renews its membership. The IRA after 1946 had never been overly keen on absorbing students, particularly university students. They were too often part-time people and impatient of discipline, and their intellectual talents were not particularly useful to a secret army preparing a guerrilla campaign. The most apparent feature of the Constitution is that the 1925 IRA is a democratic army with regular elections to determine the leadership.
