THE IRISH-SPEAKING DISTRICTS 9 



only will be spoken, in the remaining tenth Irish will be 

 understood ! And once that stage is reached " the 

 rest is silence." 



Now, do not imagine that I have brought you here in 

 order to belittle the work of the Gaelic League in your 

 presence. The work has been a great and a noble one. 

 But there is so much still to be done ! The Gaelic League 

 has now passed the mad fervour of youth, and is thought 

 in some quarters to be slowing down. Whether this is a 

 fact I cannot say, but I am quite sure of this the rate 

 of progress is too slow. Only by a violent acceleration 

 can we hope to achieve our purpose. The time is short. 

 We are not yet even in sight of the hill- top. We have a 

 long march before us. We are badly provisioned. Our 

 only possible guides, the native speakers, are dropping 

 one by one, and at the present rate, long before we can 

 reach the promised land of Gaeldom, the Gaelic nation 

 will have perished, as a nation, in the wilderness of 

 anglicization. 



The case, it seems to me, is worse than I have stated. 

 The odds against us to-day are far greater than they were 

 ten years ago. Everything that has been done since that 

 time to help the people of Ireland on the road to pros- 

 perity local government, land purchase, industrial develop- 

 ment, agricultural organization, down to the old age 

 pensioner's pass-book has tended to encourage the use 

 of English in Irish-speaking districts. People talk now 

 about making Gal way a Transatlantic port. No doubt 

 that would put new life into the decaying town, and rouse 

 the neighbouring countryside from the torpor of centuries. 

 But that life would, under present conditions, be anything 

 but a help to the Gaelic League. It needs very little 

 exercise of imagination to call up a picture of a glorified 

 Claddagh, a new Queenstown, crowded with well-dressed and 

 prosperous citizens, caring as much and as little for Gaelic 

 as the crowds on the band promenade of the old Queenstown. 

 At the present day the language just lingers on, but where- 

 ever it has been brought into competition with English, 

 the weaker has gone to the wall. This is inevitable. As 



