My Visitors 151 



growth is in social differentiation and delegated 

 subdivision. The results already reveal them- 

 selves everywhere, but probably most of all in 

 Ireland, where the business is most complex and 

 least in view. The real danger to England to-day 

 is not the " German menace " but rather the 

 internal atrophy of overgrowth, which may at any 

 time kill a State that has flourished on the 

 adversities. 



Without the facts, who could imagine the 

 motive power and the central machinery of a great 

 empire racking the wheels and straining the gear in 

 Imperial alarm at the sight of practicable prosperity 

 on a bit of cut-away bog among the outer areas of 

 spoonfed inefficiency ? With the facts, who could 

 imagine the same empire and the same machinery 

 co-operating in official falsehood to discredit the 

 bit of cut-away bog for a policy of palpable fraud, 

 imposed by the will of organised incompetence ? 

 I confess that I could not have imagined either as 

 anything but absurd until I had by patient 

 attempting brought both within the focus of 

 undeniable fact. It is far more than an Irish 

 matter. In a simple but essential way, it involves 

 the problem of Imperial vitality, and it would be 

 well for England to know that there are many more 

 Irishmen prepared to share in the spoil than to 

 confess their wish for it. The policy of " fooling 

 the British " goes far beyond the boundaries of 

 party strategy, but I can neither share the wish 

 nor accept the method, the good of both peoples 

 being more to my mind, and more easily accom- 



