In 1909 two Irish Protestant nationalist activists, Countess Constance Markievicz (1868-1927) and Bulmer Hobson (1883-1969), established a nationalist youth organisation called Na Fianna Éireann, or the Irish National Boy Scouts.2 The foundation of the Fianna was an Irish nationalist manifestation of the proliferation of ‘pseudo-military youth groups’ that occurred in many western countries in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These groups were not only part of the cult of discipline, training and manliness that grew out of the menace of the coming war in Europe,3 but also a reaction to a widely-perceived fin-de-siècle ‘decadence’. For instance, the British Army’s poor performance against a force of South African farmers during the Boer War (1899-1902) provoked much concern that British men were in a state of decline. Fearing that they were losing their competitive edge in industrial and military affairs and that their populations were deteriorating both physically and morally, western countries like Britain began ‘to look to the health, education and moral welfare of the rising generation’.4 The establishment of youth groups was one way of dealing with the perceived problem.