MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
THE English are, I suppose, a most complacent race. Having for generations exercised dominion over palm and pine, losing one Empire only to pick up another, they have acquired. the habit of taking their own importance for granted. This tendency has been much enhanced by the history which they learn at school. Other little • boys—such as Czech, Italian or American little boys—are taught to revere the national heroes or the founding fathers who welded their nation into unity or liberated it from foreign oppression. English little boys are taught nothing of the sort. Caesar's expedition is represented to us, and not inaccurately, as a gesture of curiosity ; the three hundred and fifty years of Roman occupation are dismissed as a curious archaeological episode ; the Danes, the Angles and the Saxons appear, not as conquerors, but as picturesque marauders ; the Norman Conquest was admittedly a conquest, but it is heartening to be assured of the rapidity with which these visiting Frenchmen were absorbed, as were the Huguenots, into our sound Anglo-Saxon stock. All these invasions are made to appear, either as purely incidental, or else as having conferred some immense benefit upon the invaders, who were enabled, after a few years of probation or quarantine, to qualify for the high privilege of being English. Some- one has already remarked upon the curious fact that the English schoolboy (having been told about Crecy and Agincourt, having
been taught to regard Anjou and Aquitaine as English provinces) is kept in the dark about the further progress of the French wars until he awakes suddenly to discover that Calais was engraved on Bloody Mary's heart. For us there is no single unifying epic of a War of Liberation ; we have a series of military expeditions, in which by some magic we were always victorious ; and we are consoled by the assertion that the only war in which we were admittedly defeated was that undertaken against our own kith and kin. Thus although we acquire, and quite often retain, some sense of patriotism, we have little conception of what the emotion of nationalism really implies.
* It is therefore an excellent thing, from time to time, to visit Dublin and to spend a day or two talking to Irishmen, reading with diligence the articles of the more extreme Irish Press, and listening to children's hour upon the Irish wireless. We are, for instance, trained to regard the armed forces of the United Kingdom as no less beneficent and sedate than the London policemen. If we apply our minds more specifically to the subject, the English private soldier seems an ungainly youth with adenoids and a heart of gold ; the English able seaman a man of profound philanthropy and resource ; whereas the English aviator soars upwards into the empyrean of legend and romance. That is not always the view taken by foreign countries of our armed forces, or one which figures with any prominence in their school-books. Young Americans are taught a great deal about the " redcoats " whose ruthlessness, it seems, was only matched by the ease with which they could be outwitted. And I was surprised, when in Dublin last week, to notice how fre- quently the expression " British bayonets " crept into the conversa- tion. These bayonets, in the recent past, had impaled babies and stabbed people suffering from tuberculosis ; and in the immediate present they were being employed to maintain the partition of Ire- _ land, to deter the citizens of the six north-eastern counties from exercising the right of self-determination, and to prevent an Ireland prosperous and united from assuming her rightful place among the nations of Europe.
* * * The English have a friendly feeling for the Irish ; they wish them well. Were I an Irishman, I should resent this solicitude. I should be enraged by the picture of my countrymen and their agreeable Paddy ways which the English have evolved to comfort their self- esteem. The average Englishman, who knows nothing about Ireland, persists in regarding the Irish as an amused and amusing race, en. dowed with much easy-going charm. The Irishman of today is seldom amusing and rarely amused ; he is grim, austere, resolute, suspicious, earnest and a shade rigid. He is not in the least easy- _ going ; he is tetchy, touchy, obstinate. The charm which illumines his intelligence is certainly present ; yet it is strange that profound religious convictions when coupled with a habit of puritanism should generate so marked a degree of hatred. It is often said that self-pity is a dominant trait in the character of the Irish ; it is certainly true that they have a vivid memory of the wrongs and suffering to which they have been exposed ; yet what strikes a foreign visitor most is the extreme bitterness of their political or party emotions. They do not possess the easy forgetfulness, the indolent moderation, which are such valuable components in the English political genius. Unless we understand the stiffness of their movements, the jerkiness of their thoughts, we may attribute to impulsiveness, or to a lack of ordinary logic, actions which are due rather to inherited attitudes affecting rather formalistic minds. Were I to deal with Irish problems or politicians, I should seek from the outset to clear my mind of all previous assumptions regarding the Irish character, and approach them with that diffidence with which one approaches' a foreign country which has not yet become accustomed to the liberty which, with such ardour, it has recently won.
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I admit that the bewilderment with which I first heard of Mr. Costello's decision to repeal the External Relations Act, and thereby to sever Ireland's link with the Commonwealth, has not been diminished by my visit to Dublin. After all, Mr. Costello is not a fanatic ; he is a man of wide experience and cautious political judgement. Mr. MacBride, who may well become a great figure in Irish politics, has it is true inherited a tremendous revolutionary past; but Mr. MacBride is not only a man of sensitive intelligence, he is a man of the world. It seems impossible to attribute to such men either lack of political cognisance or an impulsive tendency to secure party advantage at the risk of placing themselves in a false position. The repeal of the External Relations Act Was not a feature in 'the ten-point programme on which the present association of parties (they do not like it being called a " coalition") ousted Mr. de Valera. Yet after his return from Canada Mr. Costello suddenly put forward this unwanted and, to our minds, wholly unnecessary proposition. I am still utterly in the dark as to the interpretation of this great Fine Gael mystery. I do not for one moment believe that the policy of Ireland could in any degree be affected by the blandish- ment of Pandit Nehru. I am quite sure that this gesture was not influenced by any desire to twist the tail of a lion who, when viewed from the elderly spinster amosphere of Dublin, seems so young and fresh. Yet I am left with the riddle as to why intelligent men, who wholly disagree with Mr. de Valera that partition can ever be abolished by force, should have made a gratuitous gesture which will for many years render it impossible that union can be accomplished by consent.
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One of the advantages of getting old and acquiring experience is that one does not hesitate to avow that one simply does not know. I have no idea at all why_ Mr. Costello and Mr. MacBride decided to sever their last link with the Commonwealth. I wonder sometimes whether they are quite sure themselves. I wonder whether they really ; understand Ulster, of the hornets which are there nested, any more than I really understand Ireland. I have an affection for foreign countries which have recently acquired independence; I should like before I die to see Ireland united and prosperousri deplore the fact that so many Irishmen, feeding on their own memories, should suppose that our own attitude is one of We are not angr3 ; we are puzzled; and after visiting Ireland and talking to all those gifted people, I remain just as puzzled as I was before and even more sympathetic.
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