[CHAPTER XI]
What Ireland Wants
BEFORE I went to Ireland I imagined the Irish standing in a crowd with their right hands pointing to heaven and all of them demanding home rule. But talk about shades of opinion and political differences at home, why, it's nothing to the mixture here.
I meet a man to-day and as I shake his hand I tell him with heartfelt sympathy that I hope he'll get home rule, that most of us are with him in the United States, and he wrings my hand and tells me that American sympathy is the thing that has kept Ireland up.
My bosom swells with pride and I feel that I have hit on just the right phrase to use.
Next day I meet another Irishman, a Protestant from Belfast, and as I wring his hand with emotional fervor, I tell him that I hope he'll get home rule, and he pulls his hand from my grasp to bring it down on desk or counter or table with impetuosity, as he says, "Ireland doesn't want home rule. If the phrase had never been coined Ireland would be happy to-day. What Ireland wants is less sympathy from outsiders. If my child bumps his head and begins to cry, I say, 'Sure it's nothing. Brave boys like to bump their heads,' and he begins to laugh and forgets about it. But if a stranger says, 'Poor Patsy. It must hurt awfully,' then he sets up a howl about it and fancies he's injured. What Ireland needs is to forget her troubles and her political disabilities and work. An Irish workingman in Ireland is the laziest man alive. When he goes to America or Canada or Australia and is released from priestly authority he's a hard worker and a success, but Paddy in the fields is always looking for saints' days—and finding them—and when he finds them he takes a holiday."
I am silent because I really know so little about it, but next day I meet another Protestant and I say to him, "I suppose it's Rome rule that is killing Ireland?"
He's up in the air at once and tells me that it is the priests who are interesting the peasants in the revival of industries long dormant.