10 



it is felt. Your energy or your lethargy in production 

 will not help or hinder one side in this terrible conflict. 

 It will help or weaken both alike, for increased produc- 

 tion or lessened production in the harvests of the world 

 affect all countries finally, prices tending to find their 

 level as water does. So those questions of the right 

 or wrong of the war which have been raised in certain 

 quarters in Ireland do not affect the duty of the farmer 

 as farmer however they may affect his conduct as- 

 citizen or politician. In a very special sense the well- 

 being of the Irish people will depend, while the war lasts 

 and for some time after, on the enterprise of the .far- 

 mers, For the industrial centres in the North are 

 suffering, and will suffer still more as the meagre 

 supply of flax which has been doled out in half-time 

 work comes to an end. From Belgium no flax will come 

 to eke out Irish supplies. What escaped destruction in 

 the battles over the flax-growing centres was taken to 

 Germany. From Russia little came, and it is unlikely 

 indeed that much will come, so one great Irish industry 

 on which many thousands of Irish people depended for 

 their means of living has been stricken and will be in 

 a shaky condition for a year, or perhaps for two years 

 and may be longer, and all the people employed in 

 supplying the necessities of the workers in the Irish tex- 

 tile industries will suffer in their turn through the 

 lessening amount of wages spent. There has been a 

 kind of fictitious prosperity in some towns brought about 

 by orders from the Admiralty or War Office, but the 

 spending of money in that way is like the spending of 

 capital. While the capital lasts the spender may live 

 up to his old standard or beyond it even, but when the 

 expenditure of capital comes to an end there is absolute 

 destitution. Unless some new form of wealth produc- 

 tion comes in, or unless some old industry is revitalised 

 to replace the decrepit industries, the nation will be in 

 a very bad way indeed, and if nothing of the kind hap- 

 pens in Ireland, we will for many years during and after 

 the war have our town population in a state of extreme 



