Let us also remember that it represents the application of State-aid to economic development. But with the utmost caution, and the utmost efforts to elicit self-help, one may go too far in the direction of State-aid, and even in this sphere it is by no means certain that Ireland is free from danger. Let us pass to another movement whose essence is self-help: I mean the movement for Agricultural Co-operation. Here again Sir Horace Plunkett was the originator. Indeed, with him and his able associates and advisers, of whom Lord Monteagle and Mr. R.A. Anderson, the Secretary of the I.A.O.S., were the first, the twin aims of self-help and State-aid were combined as they should be, in one big, harmonious policy. Self-help must, indeed, they held, be antecedent to, and preparatory for, State-aid. The position confronting them was that half a million unorganized tenant farmers, for the most part cultivating excessively small holdings, and just beginning to emerge after generations of agrarian war from an economic serfdom, were face to face with the competition of highly organized European countries, and of vast and rapidly developing territories of North and South America. It was as far back as 1889 that the first propaganda was begun, and in 1894, a year before the Recess Committee met, the Irish Agricultural Organization Society was formed. By unwearied pains and patience, seemingly hopeless obstacles had been overcome, apathy, ignorance, and often contemptuous opposition from men of both political parties. For, with that ruinous pessimism always endemic in countries not politically free, and exactly paralleled in the Canada described by the Durham Report of 1839, extremists were inclined to suspect any movement which drew recruits from both political camps. Nevertheless, the island is now covered with a network of 886 co-operative societies, creameries, agricultural societies (for selling implements, foodstuffs, etc.), credit banks, poultry societies, and other miscellaneous organizations. The total membership is nearly 100,000, the total turnover nearly two and a half millions.[55] Nearly half the butter exported from Ireland is made in the 392 co-operative creameries, and at the other end of the scale extraordinarily valuable work is done by the 237 agricultural credit banks, which supply small loans, averaging only £4 apiece, for strictly productive purposes on a system of mutual credit.
Moral and material regeneration go together. The aim is to build up a new rural civilization, to put life, heart, and hope into the monotony of country life and unite all classes in the strong bonds of sympathy and interest: a splendid ideal, applicable not to Ireland alone, but to all countries, and Ireland may truly be said to be pointing the way to many another country, Great Britain included.
The Co-operative movement attracts the most intelligent and progressive elements of the rural population. Strictly non-political itself, it unites creeds and parties. It is as strong in predominantly Roman Catholic districts as in predominantly Protestant districts, strongest of all in Catholic Wexford. Probably two-thirds or more of the co-operators are Home Rulers, but that only accidentally reflects the distribution of Irish parties. On the local committees political animus is unknown. The governing body contains members, lay and clerical, of all shades of opinion. Step into Plunkett House, that hospitable headquarters of the Organization Society, and if you have been nurtured in legends about inextinguishable class and creed antipathies, which are supposed to render Home Rule impossible and the eternal "umpirage" of Great Britain inevitable, you will soon learn to marvel that anyone can be found to propagate them. Here, just because men are working together in a practical, self-contained, home-ruled organization for the good of the whole country, you will find liberality, open-mindedness, brotherhood, and keen, intelligent patriotism from Ulsterman and Southerners alike. The atmosphere is not political. But you will come away with a sense of the absurdity, of the insolence, of saying that a country which can produce and conduct fine movements like this is unfit for self-government. I should add a word about a new organization which only came into being this year, and which also has its home at Plunkett House, the United Irishwomen, whose aim, in their own words, is to "unite Irishwomen for the social and economic advantage of Ireland." "They intend to organize the women of all classes in every rural district in Ireland for social service. These bodies will discuss, and, if need be, take action upon any and every matter which concerns the welfare of society in their several localities. So far as women's knowledge and influence will avail, they will strive for a higher standard of material comfort and physical well-being in the country home, a more advanced agricultural economy, and a social existence a little more in harmony with the intellect and temperament of our people." Anyone who wants to understand something of the spirit of the new self-reliant Ireland which is springing up to-day should read the thrilling little pamphlet (I cannot describe it otherwise) from which I quote these words, and which introduced the United Irish-women to the world, with its preface by Father T.A. Finlay, and its essays by Mrs. Ellice Pilkington, Sir Horace Plunkett, and Mr. George W. Russell, better known as "Æ," poet, painter, and Editor of the Co-operative weekly, the Irish Homestead. Nor can I leave this part of my subject without referring to that amazing little journal. No other newspaper in the world that I know of bears upon it so deep an impress of genius. There are no "politics," in the Irish sense, in it. It would be impossible to infer from its pages how the Editor voted. What fascinates the reader is the shrewd and witty analysis of Irish problems, the high range of vision which exposes the shortcomings and reveals the illimitable possibilities of a regenerated Ireland and the ceaseless and implacable war waged by the Editor upon all pettiness, melancholy, and pessimism.
What the Agricultural Organization Society is doing for agriculture the Industrial Development Associations, formed only in quite recent years, are doing, in a different way, for the encouragement of Irish industries. The Associations of Belfast, Cork, and other cities work in harmony, and meet in an annual All-Ireland Industrial Conference. Their effort is to secure the concentration of Irish brains and capital on Irish industrial questions, to promote the sale of Irish goods, both in Ireland, Great Britain, and foreign countries, and to protect these goods against piracy and illicit competition.[56] Here again co-operation for Irish welfare brings together the creeds and races, and tends to extinguish old bigotries and antipathies. Here again the truth is recognized that Ireland is a distinct economic entity whose conditions and needs demand special study from her citizens. In a country of which that basal truth is recognized it would seem inexplicable that Protestants and Catholics who meet in committee-rooms and on platforms to promote, outside Parliament, the common interests of Ireland, should not unite as one man to demand an Irish Legislature in which to focus those interests and make them the subjects of direct legislative enactment, free both from the paternal and the coercive interference of a country differently situated, and absorbed in its own affairs.
I pass from the agricultural and industrial movements to another powerful factor in the reconstruction of Ireland, namely, the Gaelic League, founded in 1893, whose success under the Presidency of Dr. Douglas Hyde in reviving the old national language, culture, and amusements, is attracting the attention of the world. Fortunately the League encountered some ridicule at the outset and prospered proportionately. Some of its work is not above criticism, but few persons—and none who have the least knowledge of such intellectual revivals elsewhere—now care to laugh at it. The League is non-political and non-sectarian. Strange, is it not, that such a movement should have to emphasize the fact? Strange paradox that in a country which is being re-born into a consciousness of its own individuality, which is regaining its own pride and self-respect, recovering its lost literature and culture, and vibrating to that "iron string, Trust thyself," the conflict for self-government, that elementary symbol of self-trust, should still retain enough intestinal bitterness to compel men to label national movements as non-political and non-sectarian! It would be idle, of course, to pretend that this national movement, like all others in Ireland, does not strengthen, especially among the younger generation, which grows increasingly Nationalist, the sentiment for Home Rule. If it did not, we should indeed be in the presence of something miraculously abnormal.
Meanwhile the Celtic revival does visible good. The language is no longer a fad; it is an envied accomplishment, a mark of distinction and education. Wherever it goes, North and South, it obliterates race and creed distinctions, and all the terrible memories associated with them. There are Ulstermen of Saxon or Scottish stock in whom the fascination of Irish art and literature has extirpated every trace of Orangeism and all implied in it. The language revivifies traditions, as beautiful as they are glorious, of an Ireland full of high passions and stormy domestic feuds, but united in sentiment, breeding warriors, poets, lawgivers, saints, and fertilizing Europe with her missionary genius. However far those times are, however grim and pitiful the havoc wrought by the race war, it is nevertheless a fact for thinkers and statesmen to ponder over, not a phantasy to sneer at, that Celtic Ireland lives. Anglicization has failed, not because Celts cannot appreciate the noblest manifestations of English genius in art, letters, science, war, colonization, but because to repress their own culture and nationality is at the same time to repress their power of appreciation and assimilation. Until comparatively recent times, it was only the worst of English literature and music, the cheapest newspaper twaddle, the inanest music-hall songs, which penetrated beyond a limited circle of culture into the life of the country. The revolt against this sterilizing and belittling side of anglicization is strong and healthy. It affects all classes. Farmers, labourers, small tradesmen, who had never conceived the idea of learning for learning's sake, and who had grown up, thanks to the national system of education, in all but complete ignorance of their own country's history and literature, spend time on reading and study and in the practice of the old indigenous dances and music, which was formerly wasted in idleness or dissipation. Temperance and social harmony are irresistibly forwarded. Nor is it a question of a few able men imposing their will on the many, or of an artificial, State-aided process. Though the language has obtained a footing in more than a third of the State schools and in the National University,[57] the motive force behind it comes from the people themselves. In the country district, with which I am best acquainted, boys and girls from very poor families are clubbing together to pay instructors in the Irish language and dances, and the same thing is going on all over Ireland.
The brilliant modern school of poets and playwrights who, steeped in the old Celtic thought and culture, have found for it such an exquisite vehicle in the English tongue, speak for themselves and are winning their own way to renown. The only criticism I venture to make is that some of them are too much inclined to look backward instead of forward, to idealize the far past rather than to illuminate the future, and to delineate the deformities of national character produced by ages of repression, rather than to aid in conjuring into being a virile, normal nation.
The name of the last movement to be referred to sums up all the others, Sinn Fein. Unlike the others, it had a purely political origin, and for that reason, probably, never made the same progress. Yet the explanation is simple. In pursuance of the general purpose of inspiring Irishmen to rely on themselves for their own salvation, economic and spiritual, Sinn Feiners, like John Mitchel and others in the past, and like the Hungarian patriots, attacked, with much point and satire, the whole policy of constitutional and Parliamentary agitation for Home Rule. The policy, they said, had failed for half a century; it was not only negative and barren, but positively harmful. Nationalists should refuse to send Members to Westminster and abide by the consequences. Sensibly enough, most Irishmen, while recognizing that there was an element of indisputable and valuable truth in this bold diagnosis, decided that it was premature to adopt the prescription. Public opinion in Britain was slowly changing, and confidence existed that this opinion would be finally converted. If the Sinn Fein alternative meant anything at all, it meant complete separation, which Ireland does not want, and a final abandonment of constitutional methods. If another Home Rule Bill were to fail, Sinn Fein would undoubtedly redouble its strength. Its ideas are sane and sound. They are at bottom exactly the ideas which actuate every progressive and spirited community, and which in Ireland animate the Industrial Development Associations, the Co-operative movement, the thirst for technical instruction, the Gaelic League, the literary revival, and the work of the only truly Irish organ of government, the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction.
Now, where do we stand? Are the phenomena I have reviewed arguments for Home Rule or against Home Rule? Do they tend to show that Ireland is "fitter" now for Home Rule, or that she manages very well without Home Rule? These are superfluous questions. They are never asked save of countries obviously designed to govern themselves and obstinately denied the right. Who would say now of Canada or Australia that they ought to have solved their economic, agrarian, and religious problems and have evolved an indigenous literature before they were declared fit for Home Rule, or—still more unreasonable proposition—that their strenuous efforts after self-help and internal harmony in the teeth of political disabilities proved, in so far as they were successful, that external government was a success?
Yet these questions were, as a fact, asked of the Colonies, as they are asked of Ireland. And misgovernment increased, and passions rose, and blood flowed, while, in the guise of dispassionate psychologists, a great many narrow, egotistical, and bullying people at home propounded these arid conundrums. Where is our common sense? The Irish phenomena I have described arise in spite of the absence of Home Rule, and the denial of Home Rule sets an absolute and final bar to progress beyond a certain point.