20 JUNE 1925, Page 29

The Isle of Ghosts. By Shaw Desmond. (Duckworth. '7s. 6d.

net.)—The tragic irony of Irish patriotism has never been more discerningly expressed than in Mr. Shaw Desmond's new volume. The book ends—except for the cynical epilogue with passages of great beauty. " I see that there is something destroyed in Ireland—but that Ireland, all the same, holds all the sweetness of life and of death. She cannot save herself, but she can yet save others. . . . we stood for a free Ireland before we ourselves were free, as though a man could take the shadow and lose the substance." Could the note of ineffectual self-pity which haunts so much of Irish life and literature be better or more poignantly expressed ?