has exalted urban civilisation by the arts 

 and sciences until the cities are beautiful and 

 healthy and the life is quickened by intellect. The first 

 civilisation it is in our power to create in a generation 

 at its best. The second for us would indeed be a long 

 labour, and if we turned from the task of building up a 

 rural civilisation to making the urban life predominant, 

 Ireland would wait many a long year combating the alco- 

 holic intelligence which rules in its towns and which 

 has made them so generally corrupt in their administra- 

 tion and so mean, dirty and disorderly in their character. 

 These things will have to be fought, and urban life will 

 demand its just share of national interest, but we will 

 move a hundred times more rapidly to national pros- 

 perity and' happiness if we try to make our civilisation 

 predominantly rural. There will be a better race in Ire- 

 land, stronger men and comelier women, and we will be 

 less subject to shock by the tidal ebb and flow of the 

 industrial world, with its slumps in trade, its feverish 

 and transient prosperities, and its dependence upon 

 factors and forces outside Ireland and beyond possibility 

 of control by us. I have fought your battles and worked 

 for many years to bring about a rural civilisation in Ire- 

 land, and I think I should be accounted as a friend, and 

 as a friend I give you this frank and friendly advice 

 about your duty now and have tried to show how your 

 future status in Ireland depends on your actions in this 

 year of crisis and peril. What I have said may irritate 

 some of you, but that I cannot help. I would never have 

 been worth my salt as champion of your co-operative 

 movement if I was not as ready to tell you unpleasant 

 truths as I was to tell them to your enemies. I have no 

 desire to irritate you, but only to help you and your cause 

 by telling you what many people are murmuring to-day, 

 and what will be an outcry against you to-morrow, if you 

 do not heed the warning. I subscribe myself your 

 sincere friend, 



THE EDITOR. 



