The Open Secret of Ireland

he claims the right to enter into possession of her own soul. She claims the toga virilis, and all the strengthening burdens of freedom. Now it is diff

sed; suppose you were suddenly asked "to state the case for civilisation"? So it is with the Home Rule idea. To ask what is the gate of entrance to it is like asking what was the gate of entrance to hundred-gated Thebes. My friend, Mr Barry O'Brien, in lecturing on Ireland, used to begin by recounting a very agreeable and appropriate story. A prisoner on trial was asked whether he would accept for his case the jury which had tried the last. He objected very vehemently. "Well

tion I know; but what is a nation? "A community of memories and hopes," says Anatole France; but that applies to a football club. Something for which a man will die, says Mr T. M. Healy: but men will die for strange reasons; there was a French poet who shot himself because the trees were always green in the spring and never, for a change, blue or red. A cultural unit, say the anthropologists; an idea of the divine mind, declare Mazzini

sters of a wisdom too high and too austere for these days may be invoked-tell us that the departed soul, even though it be

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will notice the presence of these characteristics, but it is an absence, a void that will most impress you. You will see not a body that has lost its shadow, but something more sini

eless, always has its way. What other interpretation is possible? Lancashire, to take any random contrast, is much richer than Ireland in wealth and population; but Lancashire is not a "Question." Lan

sm. Labour, like capital, showed a rapid tendency to become international or rather supernational. "The workers," proclaimed Marx, "have no fatherland." While this was the drift of ideas in the economic sphere, that in the political was no more favourable. Belgium seemed on the point of extinction, Italy was a mere geographical expression, Hungary was abject and broken. In the narrower but even more significant sphere of British colonial policy the passion for centralisation had not yet been understood in all its folly. Downing Street still functioned as the Dublin Castle of the Empire. The possibility of the overseas possessions developing that

rman Social Democracy that the most scientific expression of the new spirit is to be sought. Truly Marx has been indeed translated. His abstract and etiolated internationalism has been replaced by the

hey may themselves possess culture and produce it. All culture is national. It takes its rise in some special people, and reaches its highest form in national character.... Socialism and the national idea are thus not opposed to each other. Every attempt to weaken the national idea is an attempt to lessen the precious possessions of mankind.... Socialism wants to organise, and not disintegr

key, Persia, Egypt. But it is in Imperial politics that the bouleversement has been most complete. When critics now find fault with the structure of the Empire they complain not that there is too much Downing Street in it, but that the residual power of Downing Street-is not visible to the naked eye. To us Irish the blindness of England to the meaning of her own colonial work is a maddening miracle. A wit of the time met Goldsmith at dinner. The novelist was a little more disconcerting than usual, a result, let us

colonies. In both cases there is an attempt to suppress individuality and initiative, to exploit, to bully, to Downing Street-ify. It was a policy of Unionism, the sort of Unionism that linked the destiny of the

Transvaal-such were the prop?deutics to the establishment of freedom and the dawn of loyalty in the overseas possessions. But in this field of government the gods gave England not only a great pioneer, Lord Durham, but also the gr

erous, energetic. The unhappy divisions which prevailed at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and which darkened with actual revolt and bloodshed the dawn of the Victorian era, are now only a memory. The links which bind the Dominion to Great Britain may on paper seem slight, but they are resistless.

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lity" of the overseas possessions. As for the political effects of the change, every English writer repeats of the Colonies what Grattan, in other circumstances, said of the Irish: Loyalty is their foible. There is indeed one notable flaw in the colonial parallel. I have spoken as if the claim of the Colonies on foot of the principle of nationality was comparable to that of Ireland. That of course was not the case. They were at most nations

s the inscription on his monument. It echoes and re-echoes through the resolutions of every meeting, and constitutes for many orators their total stock of political ideas. It provides the title of the Irish delegation to Parliament, and is endorsed at General Election after General Election by a great and unchanging majority. A people such as this is not to be exterminated. An ideal such as this is not to be destroyed. Recognise the one, sever the ligatures that check the free flow of blood through the veins of the o

other in time of hunger? Sentiment is the most respectable thing in human psychology. No one believes in it more thoroughly than your reactionary Tory. But he wears his heart on his sleeve with a difference. He is so greedily patriotic that he would keep all the patriotism in the world to himself. That he should love his country is natural and noble, a theme so high as to be worthy of Mr Kipling or even Mr Alfred Austin

nor stronger. Rich or poor, a man must be master of his own fate. Poor or rich, a nation must be captain of her own soul. In the suburban road in which you live there are probably at least a hundred other house-holds. Now if you were all, each suppressing his individuality, to club together you could build in place of the brick-boxes in which you live a magnificent phalanstery. There you could have more air for your lungs and more art for your soul, a spacious and a gracious life, cheaper washing, cheaper food, and a royal kitchen. But you will not do it. Why? Because it profiteth a man nothing to gain the services of a Paris ma?tre

a than a man whose life oscillates daily like a pendulum between Clapham and the Strand. The old natural philosophers accepted the theory of actio distans, that is to say they assumed that a body could act effectively where it was not. This was Unionism in science, and needless to say it was wrong. In politics it is equally wrong, and it has been repudiated everywhere except in Ireland. Physical vision is limited in range; a

the economic complement of the other. But if the bootmaker were to insist on having his finger in the farmer's pie, the pie, destined for the bootmaker's own appetite, would not be improved. If he were to insist on applying to the living cow those processes which he applies with such success to the dead leather, th

han any Unionist. There is as much truth in saying that life begins where politics end, as in saying that love begins where love-making ends. Constitutional freedom is not the fifth act of the social drama in modern times, it is rather the prologue, or, better still, the theatre in which other ideas that move men find an arena for their conflict. Ireland, a little exhausted by her intense efforts of the last thirty years, does assuredly need a rest-cure from agitation.