6 IRISH SPELLING 



personal share in the work of the Gaelic League as I had 

 done at an earlier stage, still I maintain that the nation 

 is greater than any league can ever be, and I claim the 

 privileges as well as the duties of nationality in dealing 

 with national questions. 



Let me come to the point at once. The question that 

 must be faced is simply this. Is the language movement 

 so far a success ? To answer this question properly we 

 must free our minds of prejudice, and carefully exclude 

 all topics that serve to dazzle the eyes. It is not a question 

 of essential Irish versus compulsory Latin, or of school 

 programmes, or of public processions, or of feiseanna, or 

 of war-pipes or four-hand reels. It is not and this I 

 wish to emphasize it is not a question of industrial re- 

 vivals and wearing only clothes of Irish manufacture. 

 These things are good in their way. Evening classes and 

 music and dancing and little competitions and prizes and 

 public gatherings have added a new interest and a bright- 

 ness to the lives of many of us. Without industries the 

 nation cannot even exist, and it must at least exist before 

 it can become a Gaelic nation. And last, but not least, 

 the University students are likely to leave their mark on 

 the country before many years. But all these things are 

 not the things the language movement was started to 

 promote. Is the language itself, the spoken language, still 

 dying ? Is it a fact that its decay has not even been 

 arrested ? That Irish-speaking children do not take the 

 place of Irish-speaking, not to say English-speaking, 

 parents ? That the movement has not yet really touched 

 the Irish-speaking districts, and has had merely a super- 

 ficial effect on the anglicized districts ? In short, is it 

 true to-day, as was publicly stated six or seven years ago, 

 that the vessel is leaking faster than we can fill it ? An 

 affirmative answer to these questions implies that the 

 methods now used to save Irish where it is still spoken, 

 and to spread it to places where it has died out, are doomed 

 to certain failure. Now, I do not want to discourage honest 

 workers. They will need all their enthusiasm. But the 

 truth must be faced, particularly when the governing 



