Julj' 20, IQ16 
L A X n & W A T E R 
15 
To-day and To-morrow in Ireland 
By T. W. Rolleston 
THOSE of us who have Hvcd in this leahii and 
watched events for the past quarter of a century, 
have witnessed in that period the birth and 
growth of an entirely new Ireland. It was born 
twenty-five years ago — to-day, Uke the new shoots of 
the pine, it is pushing off the dying forms in which the 
mind of the nation expressed itself in the times of Butt 
and Parnell. To-morrow it will confront us as an accom- 
plished fact, and to understand it, and deal with it wisely, 
is one of the most urgent problems of Empire which will 
clamour for consideration after the war. 
The new Ireland was born of the bankruptcy of Irish 
politics. Parnellism died with Parnell, and left the 
country politically helpless, with its leaders, for one 
reason or another, hopelessly discredited. From that 
day to this, the politicians have achieved nothing what- 
ever for Ireland. The principal legislative landmarks of 
the time are the Local (government Act (1898) which 
they certainly did nothing to promote ; the establish- 
ment of the Department of .'\griculture and Technical 
Instruction (1899) with its voluntary wing, the co-opera- 
tive movement organised by Sir Horace Plunkett, both 
of which they fought against with embittered energy ; 
the \A'yndham Land Purchase Act (1903) which was 
initiated by the landlord and Conservative class in Ire- 
land, and which the Irish Parliamentary Party com- 
pelled Mr. Birrell to repeal when half its work was done ; 
and the foundation of the National University (1908), 
which was mainly due to the pressure of the Roman 
Catholic Church. 
In 1911 the politicians had their great opportunity. 
They took advantage of the balance of parties to compel 
the introduction of a Home Rule Bill, the planning of 
which was entirely in English hands, and which they 
, forced into law, in such a manner as to ensure the liercest 
resistance on the part of Ulster bac\ced to the last ex- 
tremity by the whole body of English Unionists. They 
thus ensured that Home Rule, when it came, if it ever did, 
would apply only to a mutilated Ireland — an Ireland 
■ with its finest Province cut out from the scope of the 
Irish Legislature. Finally, their action at the outbreak 
of the war, right and wise as it intrinsically was, stood in 
so glaring a contrast with their sayings and doings for 
the past thirty years that to Ireland it seemed only the 
crowning instance of a shameless political opportunism. 
But their deepest offence, in Irish eyes, lay in their 
consent to the mutilation of Ireland, If this is carried 
out, I do not see how it can ever be forgiven them. It is 
with p'owers of a wholly different character that the 
Government will have to deal — if it means to keep its 
eye on realities in Ireland. 
What kind of powers will these be ? At present they 
represent a process rather than a fact — certainly not, tt) 
any great extent, a political fact. At the beginning of 
the period of which we speak — the period of political 
bankruptcy — all the spiritual and economic forces which 
are now transforming the country sprang into organised 
life. Besides a multitude of minor or individual efforts in 
art and industry, we find that the Gaelic League originated 
at this time. "So did the " Feis Cecil," a remarkable 
national association for the spread of musical culture. 
So did the Irish theatre under the leadership of Mr. Yeats. 
So did Sir Horace Plunkett's great economic movement 
for the organisacion of Irish rural life and industry, 
which has now a thousand societies and a yearly turn- 
over of 3| millions. • A little earlier the Gaelic Athletic 
Association had revived the organisation of open-au- 
pastimes for Celtic Ireland. 
In all this there was certainly no lack of life and 
stir, and now for the first time we saw workers in 
another than the political field attracting the attention 
of the Irish people, and questions other than refigious or 
poUtical being debated with passionate conviction. 
These various movements were not formally co-ordinated, 
and were, indeed, sometimes seriously at odds with each 
other ; but it is easv to see that one leading principle 
underlay them all. That principle might well be em- 
bodied in the words, " Sinn Fein " — a phrase which 
afterwards came to be the slogan of a certain political 
section of the new Ireland. Sinn Fein meant simply 
self-reliance. It was opposed to Parliamentary politics 
in so far as it disdained the attitude either of suppliant 
or of bully in regard to the Legislature at Westminster. 
It called on Ireland to tackle her own problems for 
herself, without waiting for a problematical Home Rule 
.\ct, which, after all, even if it ever became law, would 
leave nearly all the serious work of reform to be done by 
means which were quite capable of being applied at 
once if Ireland could be inspired to make use of them. 
The mo\ement had another remarkable feature. 
Politics had been pursued in Ireland, necessarily perhaps, 
in a spirit which tended to deepen and widen the gulf 
between the different religions, different classes and 
different races on Irish soil. But in literature, music, art 
and economics, it was all the other way. In the Com- 
mittees of the Agricultural Societies, in the choirs which 
came to compete at the annual musical festival, in the 
audiences, the players, and the authors of the Abbey 
Theatre, and for a time even in the branches of the Gaelic 
League, men and women were drawn together from the 
most diverse elements in Ireland. In organised work 
for common interests, and in the common devotion tc 
new ideals in art and thought, the Irish people were now 
beginning to feel their way, more or less unconsciously, 
towards a national unity which would ultimately have 
made itself apparent in every sphere of Irish life. 
Another Side of the Picture 
But we have now to turn to another and a less en- 
couraging side of the picture. The Irish revi\al of 
which I am speaking was naturally marked in all its 
developments by a new interest in and reverence for 
the Celtic past of the country. Irish culture, it was felt, 
must grow from its own roots, and these lay far back in 
Celtic Ireland, with its striking imaginative literature, its 
beautiful decorati\-e art, and its records of valour and 
romance. 
The Gaelic League, originally a non-political body, 
became the special organ of the attempt to reunite 
modern Ireland with the Ireland which was politically 
and socially submerged by the Cromwellian Settlement. 
In pursuance of this i/bject, however, it committed 
itself to a belated and hopeless endeavour to revive the 
Irish language as the general medium of literature and 
social intercourse. More than twenty years of zealous 
propaganda have proved to demonstration the futility of 
this attempt, which in many of its cruder manifestations 
irritated and alienated sensible people and acted as a 
danger-signal to the great industrial communities. .\t 
this time of day it is impossible to conceive Belfast, or 
any other city, doing its business in Gaelic. But those 
who did not accept this programme were denounced as 
servile worshippers of England and English ways, and 
the speaking, reading and writing of Gaelic were declared 
to be the only road to a genuine Irish nationality. 
The enthusiasts for an " Irish Ireland," by which was 
really meant a Gaelic Ireland, filled their minds wholly 
with a past which was dead beyond recall, and had no 
vision of the new Ireland which had to be formed, if at 
all, from existing elements and based on existing facts, 
including the indissoluble political and military union 
of Ireland with the rest of the British Empire. The 
Gaelic Athletic Association carefully adapted its games 
so as to cut off those who played them from all association 
with people who played football or hockey with hereto- 
fore accepted rules. Cricket was altogether banned as 
" English," although the result was to leave Celtic 
Ireland without a suitable summer game. Names of 
streets and sign posts were written up in Gaelic in places 
where not one person in twenty knows how to read them ; 
and onlv the other day a young gentleman from Oxford was 
very properly arrested, to the indignation of "Irish Ire- 
land," becan-e he refused toanswer apoliceman'sqin-^tions 
