 A brief sketch of Irish history since the Easter Rising of 1916 is drawn, in which the hopes of the revolutionary founders of the Irish Free State for a republican society are dashed.The writer Seán Ó Faoláin argues that what emerged was a society of "urbanized peasants" without moral courage who observed a self-interested silence in a "constant alliance" with an "obscurantist" and "uncultivated" church.The film covers the continuing dominance of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy with scenes of hunting and equestrian events.