Correspondence
A Letter From Dublin
- Ireland in Revolution
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—Ireland is in revolution. Never was the word more precise. You could not walk through a shopping ,quarter in 'Dublin without realization of this. You would look into the windows of any clothiers, and would see hats, suits, boots all labelled " Irish Manufacture." You would be surprised that this applies to the shops that sell thirty- shilling ready-mades as well as tot those which supply high- quality Irish tweeds. Big stores announce mannequin parades, and the newspapers next day, give photographs of fashionable Irish ensembles (or whatever the ladies call them). If you entered a grocer's shop you would find shelves laden with breakfast " crisps," baking-powders, preserves, soaps, spices, all made, or at least packed, within the Free State tariff wall. In the neighbouring chemist's shop you would find that your fruit salts had been boxed in Dublin, that your cough-mixture was a local product made' with Carrigeen- moss, and that all your aches and pains would be cured, during your sojourn among us, with our- own balsams.. You would find your hotel being painted and varnished with native produce ; you would sit down on local chairs, before local napery,. and you would drive into the country in a Ford car with a local-made body. The country towns would give you fresh surprises ; for you would find quite smart shoeware, for men and women, made in country factories ; you would get locally-made cigarettes, and would see farm labourers working in locally-made blue dungarees.
This economic revolution must be seen to be believed. It is being carried forward with up-to-date methods. The native produce is offered in boxes and packets with designs that would delight you, done by Irish artists, often with Irish themes. Your chocolates are packed in 'boxes with exquisite pictures of the Tara brooch or the Ardagh chalice. The young men of the National University whom we literary old fogeys call " the B.-Cotruns." are showing what they can do. In the country an equally remarkable change is taking place. Land that has not felt the plough since the intensive tillage days of the submarine blockade is under crops again this year. Ireland was sinking into a green plain—like Mr. A. G. Street's Wiltshire, but with less reason— and farm labourers were dying out as bullocks multiplied ; but now tillage has been brought back. The tendency of half a century, from corn to grass, has been reversed.
Beside these changes there are big undertakings afoot, which have not made themselves felt. One is the foundation of a vast national cement industry. As England's natural building material is the brick, Ireland's is concrete (or stone), and the big building schemes which are being under- taken to relieve unemployment and to reduce the slums require millions of tons of cement. The new industry; 'founded by the State, thus has an ample market and entails a huge reduction of imports. Similarly, the peat industry is being revived by sweeping State action. A million pounds a year soon will be saved on coal imports, and the countryman beside the boglands will have a market for the produce of his toil with the slaney. All these developments carry with them a renewed enthusiasm for native games, Irish studies and national literature—everyone is reading Maurice O'Sul- livan's Twenty Years A-Growing, which marks a fresh advance towards Gaelic culture.
Intensive nationalism, then, has sprung up with a rapidity that surprises even those of us who have worked for it all our lives. I write as an old Gaelic Leaguer, who strove for the cultivation of the language, for the revival of tillage, and for the founding in Ireland of those industries proper to a mainly " peasant " civilization ; and I - say that my old comrades hardly hoped to see such sweeping achievements. The victory of Mr. de Valera's party at the polls alone would .not suffice. Mr. de Valera himself enpected only to make a beginning in the return to tillage in five years, and designed a selective and not a rapid industrial expansion. What caused the economic convulsion was the virtual suppression
of the Free State's export trade. Last year the big farmers were smitten, when their stock was rendered unsaleable. This year the small farmer suffers, for he cannot sell his yearling to the grazier. Our main industry thus is half- paralysed, and—bating a settlement with Britain—the only way of survival is to act like a nation thrown .on its own resources by a blockade. The patriot Bishop Berkeley wished to build a brass wall round Ireland in order to foster the land's potentiality. Mr. Thomas has erected that wall.
We are suffering, of course ; although, as you will he surprised to learn, the index figure of the cost of living continues to fall, while the actual standard—now that our best food can be exported no longer—rises. We suffer chiefly by dislocation, and the professional classes find money short but the humbler classes are gaining slowly by the material expansion. • Vested interests in the new regime are growing, and a fresh election would confirm the last, I think, with emphasis. Mark this : Mr. de Valera is doing something. To vote against him would be to vote to drop .his enterprises, without any alternative.
There is danger in the rapidity of the change ; but the greatest dangers are in another sphere. Partition remains. Changes would have been slower if the North-East had remained in the Free State, but the Nationalists of the North-East (a third of its population) grow increasingly restive as the magnetism of the Free State (for them) strengthens. At the same time, advanced Republicans continue to carp at -Mr. de Valera's pacific methods—which, they say, win no more from Britain than the ban on our exports. Thus, while the Free State leader is at a deadlock with London, movement to the Left continues. Evidently conscious of this, Mr. de Valera twice has declared of late his resolve to advance towards a Republic. When the Oath of Allegiance was removed finally from the Free State con- stitution a month ago, he announced that he intended to remove, in the same fashion, other features of the constitut!on which were inserted by Mr. Lloyd George when the late Michael Collins submitted a Republican constitution within the Treaty. This means that the Senate, the Governor- General and the necessary Royal Assent will be legislated away. This would bring the substance of Republicanism; and, Mr. de Valera added, he hoped to live to make a formal declaration of the Republic.
The country was surprised when the President went thus far, for he had not spoken in this strain for years. Sonic think that he has suffered a disappointment since the last election. He expected that the emphatic endorsement of his policy by the electorate would cause London to treat with him. He hoped to make a lasting peace on the basis of his celebrated " Document No. 2." Instead, deadlock has continued, and the hope of a friendly revision of the Treaty, whereby outstanding grievances—the-withheld Annuities on one side, Partition on the other—would be annulled, has receded. All his advances rebuffed, Mr. de Valera has been driven to this decision : that the only way to end the deadlock is to compel the reopening of the settlement by the piecemeal reduction of the Treaty to breaking-point, or its formal denunciation. I do not say that this is his definite decision ; but what else can be made of his words and measures ? The internal embarrassments may hasten his pace, but, unless a peace initiative comes from London, the logical issue is inevitable. -If. the Treaty is denounced we are back to the status quo of 1921. That means that the Dublin Parliament will be obliged (by Nationalist logic) to claim all-Ireland authority and to invite to its chamber those Members who now go from Northern Ireland to Westminster. It may not be able to assert that authority, but it would fall asunder if it failed to claim it or declared a twenty-six county Republic.
- Such are the prospects as a Nationalist sees them. We are all influenced in judgement by our affections. A Unionist might not give you sa confident an account of the economic revolution ; but a Nationalist's judgement has this in its favour, that he sees with the eyes of the majority. Almost any Irishman will confirm this, anyway : that if Mr. de Valera fails, movement will be towards the Left, not towards the Right. World circumstances have made that certain. Mr. de Valera would fall, not that Mr. Cosgrave should return, but that young Ireland should break away towards Moscow.
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