Correspondence
A LETTER FROM [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
Sm,—Self-governing Ireland is unlucky in possessing no moneyed and landed class to add to national life a dash of pageantry and pride. Long ago the tall poppies of the Gaelic race were cut down. The chivalry of olden Ireland passed away when the brigades sailed away to the Continent long ago. The Anglo-Irish landlords were popular as sportsmen but they failed to strike root in the nation, and they are gone. None remains, therefore, to give the people a bold lead in manners, fashions or customs. How much easier would be the task of the Gaelic revivalists (to take a single example) if the old O'Neills or the later great houses remained and exhibited the desired national type on a liberal scale ! For lack of social leadership, we are becoming de-Anglicized only to be Americanized ; our fashions now are from the films.
Yet there is one great element of pageantry left to us— the Church. The racial enthusiasm which used to express itself in the " monster meetings," where the rolling drum and the patriotic banner stirred delight in the multitude and gave romantic dignity to common life now finds its expression in religious assemblies. Never has our generation seen aught so impressive, so well-ordered, so inspiring as the mass meetings in celebration last year of the centenary of Catholic Emanci- pation. At olden, historic shrines like Mellifont Abbey and storied Cashel the Mass was celebrated for the first time since the Reformation, and whole provinces mustered. In Dublin a quarter of a million people gathered ; and I never will forget that summer's afternoon when I waited for hours in a boat upon the Liffey before the bridge from which Solemn Benediction was given, while files of thousands and thousands of men from all parts of Ireland moved' down the quays in a procession that seemed as if it never would end—and all in a solemn hush.
Recently preparations have been launched for an even vaster hosting of our people. It will take place in June, 1932, when the Thirty-first International. Eucharistic Congress will be held in Dublin. Already plans are being laid for the coming of 200,000 folk from America, and at least an equal number is expected to come from Britain.
The coming of the Papal Nuncio gave fresh occasion for pageantry: I have seen no finer or more impressive ceremony than the welcoming of the Pope's representative by the Archbishop of Dublin and some twenty other members of the hierarchy of North and South. When the Nuncio, in that strange Franciscan cappa magna moved to the Arch- bishop's throne (which he occupied as he occupies the throne of every cathedral) everyone was moved by the dramatic significance of the act. By deputy, the Supreme Pontiff was present. The Continental Church now is palpably present, and the gain is national. The Protestant leading national journal, the Irish Times, discerns promise for the unity of Ireland in the Nuncio's coming. I think that it- is right. All conjecture and all fear touching the nature of an Irish community free to pursue its dreams will pass away. Emancipation, enacted in 1829, is manifestly completed in 1930.
The religion of our people, however, is not an affair merely of pageantry. It may be the most vivid thing in Irish life, and -the only thing that now can stir the multitude and• set the cities ablaze with flags and bonfires ; but it is the deepest thing too. This is seen in the foreign missions which are sustained by Irish piety. In China the Maynooth Mission is the biggest thing in Irish history since the ancient golden age ; in Africa, too, great regions are being evangelized from secular and other houses in Ireland. The marvellous thing about these far-flung missionary activities is not the zeal of the missionaries and nuns—one was slain the other day by Chinese bandits, and all face mortal peril-Lbut the generosity that supports them. I believe that there is not one tenement house in all Dublin which does not contribute considerable sums annually to the missionary cause. Again, school children go about collections with the zeal that might be expected to be devoted to games. To my mind this national enthusiasm for the missions, although it is a hidden reality and seldom comes into the news, is the most remarkable phenomenon Of Irish life. It is all the more remarkable when the economic state of the country is considered. Great Britain's economic depression inevitably weighs upon Ireland, and it will be many a year before the Saorstat has developed an independent economy. Accordingly, hardship now is acute. Trade revival has not appeared. The national balance is still heavily adverse. Unemployment, although more severe in the industrial North, is piteously prevalent everywhere. Now comes the news that the Irish flour mills are unable to carry on save by amalgamation with British milling companies. It is understood that many mills will close down completely. It is not too much to say that the country has been shocked by the tidings. If flour mills cannot live, what can ? Is Irish agriculture, together with all associated industries, to perish ? The cry has gone up appealing to the leading parties of the State to drop their feuds and to come together in the endeavour to rescue the mills ; but this is more easily desired than accomplished. The opposition is pledged to the revival of
tillage by preference for native wheat, and its political philosophy is fully protectionist. It proposes to separate the
State currency from the British. The party now in power never will consent to these drastic methods, and so it is difficult to see how united action can be taken.
Meanwhile, a battle is raging over the censorship of films and newspapers. The film censor has neither powers to censor dialogue in the " talkies " nor machinery to effect it. The result is that sordid talking films are being exhibited in the theatres with the legend " Plot and dialogue uncensored." The board of censors has been constituted at last, but no great change is visible as yet. Papers advertising " birth control " appliances circulate, apparently, quite freely: It is stated that the law cannot touch them if the advertise- ments are not supported by editorial approval or propaganda. Thus, all that the censorship set out to do has yet to be done, and the law seems to be insufficient to enforce the intentions of its enactors. Leading champions of censorship are declaring that the whole thing has collapsed, and the present session of the Dail is likely to see a strong effort to reopen the whole question and to bring a very drastic censorship indeed into being. • An interesting aspect of the language movement is the publication of scores of books, original and translated, under Government subsidy. At the moment I am reading with gusto a good rendering of Mr. A. E. W. Mason's novel At the Villa Rose. The biggest stir has been caused by a
book called An t-Oileanach (" The Islander ")s which was
written by an old islander of the Blasketts. Someone told him that he ought to write down the story of his life. He said that he had nothing to tell. Whatever had happened to him save to fight the storms and to gather seawrack for the land ? A Russian autobiography was read to him (I think it was Gorki's, but I am not learned in the Russians) and he exclaimed : " Why, I could write a book like that I ' So did he. It is a volume of exquisitely racy diction and of curious vividness, etching quietly the common round, the humours and the griefs, of cottage life on the last brink of Europe, where, as Dr. Robin Flower has said, the Middle Ages are finally guttering out. If -you would let me; Sir, I would tell you of, this book—this glimpse of a dying age—at the length of columns !
We are hoping to see the Lane Picture Bequest in Ireland yet. The Free State Goveniment has enabled Dublin to become
possessed of one of the finest old buildings of the city.--
Charlemont House—as the home for a Municipal Art Gallery,' and has given £20,000 for the building of a fine new wing in which it is hoped to house the Lane pictures. The notion current is that London will recognize that Sir Hugh Lane's desire has been accomplished, in that a fitting setting for the pictures has been provided: It is thought that his known last wish, although judicially invalid, that Dublin should have the pictures, will be recognized, and a loan sine die of the pictures granted to the city for which originally and finally he designed his bequest. We need these pictures • and assuredly London can spare them. One recalls what Dr. Pi'. B. Yeats wrote in 1912 concerning Dublin's needs in art':—
Look up in the sun's eye and give What the exultant' heart calls good, That some new day may breed the best Because you gave, not, what they,would, But the right twigs for an eagle's nest.
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