I wish my countrymen, before coming into the fight, had known it to be so unequal. They had banished from the stage one or two plays that had given them offence and no one had greatly cared. But works of imagination such as those of Synge could not be suppressed even if burned in the market place. They had not realised the tremendous support we had, that we were not fighting alone, but with the intellect of America as well as of Europe at our back.
There was another thing they had not reckoned with. It had been put down in words by Professor William James: “Democracy is still upon its trial. The civic genius of our people is its only bulwark and neither laws nor monuments, neither battleships nor public libraries, nor churches nor universities can save us from degeneration if the inner mystery be lost. That mystery, at once the secret and glory of our English-speaking race, consists in nothing but two common habits, two inveterate habits, carried into public life. One of these is the habit of trained and disciplined good temper towards the opposite party when it fairly wins its innings. The other is that of fierce and merciless resentment towards every man or set of men who break the public peace.”
The civic genius of America decided that not we but our opponents had broken the public peace.
Now, little Richard, that is the whole story of my journey; and I wonder if by the time you can read it you will have forgotten my coming home with a big basket of grapes and bananas and grapefruit and oranges for you, and a little flag with the Stars and Stripes.
I was very glad to be at home with you again while the daffodils were blooming out, and to have no more fighting, perhaps for ever. And if it is hard to fight for a thing you love, it is harder to fight for one you have no great love for. And you will read some day in one of those books in the library that are too high now for you to reach, the story of a man who was said to be mad but has outlived many who were not, and who went about fighting for the sake of some one who was maybe “the fright of seven townlands with her biting tongue” though he still called out after every battle, “Dulcinea is the most beautiful woman of the world!” So think a long time before you choose your road, little Richard, but when you have chosen it, follow it on to the end.
Coole, July 24, 1913.
Appendices