' AN IDEAL IRISH POLITY.*
Is has been mid, more in sorrow than in anger, that there is no room in Ireland for a moderato man, but to some extent "A. E." may be regarded as a welcome exception to the rule. For he is not merely an idealist and visionary who writes beautiful verso and admirable prose. Ho has been for many years active as pioneer, propagandist, and missioner in the work of Ireland's industrial regeneration on co-operative lines—a movement which, as far as it is possible in Ireland, has been conducted on non-political and non-sectarian lines. Not that "A. E." does not hold strong and in some respects extreme views. Ho is an ardent believer in democracy, and has many hard things to say of the autocrats of industry and capitalists generally. The picture that he draws in these pages of our wage-serfs, whose livelihood depends on the caprice of tyrannous masters, is somewhat difficult to reconcile with the position secured to Trade Unions under the Trade Disputes Act. Ho not only has no confidence in legislation as a panacea for industrial evils, but he has a deep distrust of all politicians, Irish included. If ho is no lover of England or English government, he betrays no virulent anti-English bitterness. He does not brood over the woes or grievances of the past. Ho does not believe in revolutionary methods or in frontal attacks, and, while convinced that the ideal polity in Ireland must be in accord with the national instincts, he is fully alive to the faults and weaknesses that must be combated and eradicated—hull- vidualism, ignorance, and greed. In his Utopia there is no room for hatred. It is true that his reason for deprecating hostility to England is not complimentary, but at least it is not without dignity :— "Race hatred is the cheapest and basest of all national passions and it is the nature of hatred, as it is the nature of love, to change us into the likeness of that which we contemplate. We grow nobly like what we adore, and ignobly like what we hate; and no people in Ireland became so anglicized in intellect and temperament, and even in the manner of expression, as those who hated our neighbours most. All hatroda long persisted in bring us to every baseness for which we hated Ens others. The only laws which we cannot break with impunity unity are divine laws, and no law is more eternally sure in its workings than that which condemns us to be even as that we condemned. ate is the high commander of so many armies that an inquiry into the origin of this passion is at least as needful as histories of other contem- porary notorieties. Not emperors or parliaments alone raise armies, but this passion also. It will sustain nations in defeat. When every- thing seems lost this wild captain will appear and the scattered forces arc reunited. They will be as oblivious of danger as if they wore divinely inspired, but if they win their battle it is to become like the conquered , foe. All groat wars in history, all conquests, all national antagonisms result in an exchange of characteristics. It is because I wish Ireland to be itself, to act from its own will and its own centre, that I deprecate hatred as a force in national life. It is always possible to win a cause without the aid of this base helper, who betrays us over in the hour of victory."
So the economic brotherhood which ho puts forward as an Irish ideal
"would, in its realization, make us at peace with ourselves, and if we are at peace with ourselves we will be at peace with our neighbours and all other nations, and will wish them the good-will we have among our- selves, and will receive from them the same good.will. I do not believe in legal and formal solutions of national antagonisms. While we • Vie Notional Brine :. Sams Thoughts on se Irish Polite. By A. B. London : Mauusd and Co. 14$. ed. net,.' generate aniafteties among ourselves we will always display theni to other nations, and I prefer to search out how it is national hatreds are begotten, and to show how that cancer can be cut out of the body politic." But if "A. E." holds that Ireland has little tO learn from England and Must take for her Motto litandis lard da ea, his liaraledt Weide are reserved for the enemies of her own household. Lamenting the absiftite Of hereid types amongst our imidotai public men, he declaSeb that etre poets inspire' nobody to be great, and, "failing any finger-post in literature pointing to true greatness, our democracies too Often take the huckster from hie stall, the drunkard from hit pet, the lawyer from' his eetut, the eximpanY promoter from the director's chair, and elect Mid as reptesentatiaai men. We certainly do this in Ireland." But democracy Is the only` poisible form of government imieridaye, and the ideal Mph polity mast red on a democratic basie. The eolation of the problem is f undehed in the success &heady achieved by the Co-Operative Movement, the beneficent and enlightening results of which are Sketched by "A. E." partly in a record of actual achieVement, partly in a generalized portrait of the Irish farther who has come under these inflamiced. The gorabeens man is gone or going, but Much remains to be done before the reign Of the middleman is ended. Co-operative distributiOn Mutt be supers; added to co-operative production: the rural esaithminities thirst be • organized and federated with the urban ivcirkere. The' fartnet IE already free, but the labourers, though lOss nth:herons in Ireland that the small farmers, need emaithipation by adinissioá to nietelierehip of the Co-operative 8ocieties, by porn:arida employment by the com- munity, and by the formation of Co-oneteatiam Societies of agricultural labourers—the policy of collective farthing. For while "A. E." .haa no lack of sympathy with the urban worker, "agriculture is of More Importance to the nation than industry." In Ireland it is not se mush a question of i bringing people back to the hind a/ keeping them on the land.. . "A. E.'s" belief in co-operation as the germinal principle of the ideal polity is founded more oh its psychological possibilities than its contri- bution to mere physical well-being. In his Vie*, it leads, Or ought to lead, to a truo fraternity in which kindliness is the animating principle. And so it comes about that dealing with the Wei he Cannot altogether disguise his resentment that the world-struggle should hate broken in upon. and interfered with the movement which had begun so auspiciously in Ireland. The atmosphere is no longer propitious to the growth of economic solidarity. He does not discnas the war quite in the spirit of Olympian detathment which sonic; Paeificistis adopt, but one cannot resist the impression that it affects hike Chiefly as postponing the realiiatiOn Of his Utopian ideal. His viewpoint is curiously impersonal. The ultimate redpoxisibility for the conflict is not to be laid at the door Of the Tsar, the liaiaor, or Sir Edward Grey—all equally Culpable, in "A. E.'s " view—but at that of the nations Of whom they were the agents; and as they all represent a type of oivilization which is to him more or leas abhorrent, he views the sitiration rather as a distressed onlooker than as a sympathizer with °fie aide or the other. "There are no nations to Whom the entire and loYil allegiance of man's spirit could be given. It can only go out to the ideal empires and nationalities in the wdrab of time, for whose coining We pray." Ireland is to him the Most hopeful of these, sireeihely becarthe she is at the beginning of her activity as a
nation, and fUndathentals have yet to be settled. -
We confess to leasing "A. E.'s " imaginative Meditation about the character and future of the State of Ireland With more admira- tion for the beauty of the language in which it is set forth than for the practicability of its suggestions. It is to be a: rural civilization, democratic in organization, doreinated by an arNtotastose of character and intelligence, in which the farmers are to be syruliaaliets, with con- scription for civil purposes under a National Works Dspartments "10 return for their labour the State should feed and clothe its indus- trial thany, educate them, and familiarize them with some branch of employment, and Make theta more competent after this period, of service Was Over to engage in private enterprise." Militarism is to him detest- able, but we can learn from its discipline and organization. He accepts the ever-increasing domination of the individual by the State became it is hi the evolutionary process; and a State—even a bad State—must be preserved by its citizens, because it is at least an attempt at organics unity, a simulacrum of the divine ideal to Which humanity tends. In the dedication to Sir Horace Plunkett "A. E." says that a good many years ago Sir Horace Plunkett grafted a slip of poetry on his economics tree, and that "this book Li a consequence of his graftiftg'operation." It is, he explains, a speculation on the Means by which Heaven anti Earth might be brought within hailing distance of each other; and, with all its strange limitations of outlook and disregard for human nature as it 'exists, it commands respect as an expression of -the aspire- dons of a true friend of Ireland, and an indefaVgable worker lathe one field in which a constructive' and reconciling policy has been carried to a ftucowsful issue in that country.
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