BOOKS.
WHEN a creator tells of his work his book must have an interest beyond literature. It becomes an authentic document, the voice of one having authority; and when we find a worker who has thn, ability and the inclination to tell of what has been accompli Alec', it behoves us to give him an attentive audience. Many books have been written about Ireland, but few can have the value or the fascination of this record of an attempt to reconstruct an old country and to revitalise an ancient society. Sir Horace Plunkett has wisely declined to write a detailed chronicle. He deals less with results, which may be read in the publications of his Department, than with the organic principles on which his experiments are based. His aim has been, in the first place, to diagnose the Irish problem of to-day, looking below the wars of factions and creeds to the essential qualities of the people ; and, in the second place, to propound a theory of reform and sketch the first attempts to realise it.
"The conviction has been more and more borne in upon the Irish mind that the most important part of the work of re- generating Ireland must necessarily be done by Irishmen in Ireland." This is the first result of his diagnosis. True reform must be organic ; remedies must not be superimposed from without, but must spring from within, the fruit of a strengthening and quickening of the national spirit. In a very interesting chapter the author analyses the old root of bitterness, the historical English attitude to Ireland, which produced an Irish misunderstanding of English policy that was nearly as grave as the English misunderstanding of the Irish character. "In my view," he says, "Anglo-Irish history is for Englishmen to remember, for Irishmen to forget." But still more serious was the Irish misunderstanding of them- selves, which led to apathy and hopelessness on the one side, and the ready acceptance of quack remedies on the other. Irish policy was too prone to be retrospective, and, living on the wrongs of the past, to have no eye for the direct needs of the present. Now in all complex national problems there is some particular centre of gravity, and in the case of a backward, and even more of a misgoverned and embittered, nation it is generally to be found in the economic aspect. It is not the whole problem, but it is that part of it where to find a solution is to be more than half way to the final settlement. Moreover, it is that part of Ireland's case which England has moat con- spicuously misunderstood, because, being overlaid with irrele- vant political issues, it has never been put clearly before her. This economic problem, again, has one phase of chief
importance. The rural districts are the centre of Irish distress and the most typically Irish life. In them the longest steps must be taken in the process of bringing all Ireland into line with modern progress. A constructive Irish statesmanship must deal in the first place with the country population ; not only with the tenure of land (which is only the formal side of the question), but with the introduction of progressive agri- cultural methods, the creation of rural industries, the improve- ment of home life, which is the surest preventive of emigration, and with all the thousand-and-one details which make up rural society.
Such is the problem, and Sir Horace Plunkett in several illuminating chapters discusses the main difficulties in its solution. Chief of these is politics, "the belief that any legis- lation or any legislature can provide an escape from the physical and mental toil imposed through our first parents on all nations for all time." This confidence in the efficacy of a political reform to remove all the ills of the land has turned into the channels of barren agitation energies which might have been far better employed in the work of practical amelioration. Both parties, the author thinks, are coming to recognise this truth. " The mere substitution of a positive Irish policy for a negative anti-English policy will elevate the whole range of Nationalist political activity in and out of Ireland." On the religious question Sir Horace Plunkett writes with insight, and, what is much more uncommon, perfect fairness. Undoubtedly in the past the Roman Church in Ireland has done much to hamper economic development and to weaken the vitality of the race by confining it within bonds against which human nature rebels. But this mischief was largely forced upon that Church by historical causes, and to-day many of the most prominent ecclesiastics are alive to the fact that the good of the Church can never be found in the weakness of the people, and are prepared to co-operate loyally in the work of national regeneration. Lastly, there has been the difficulty of defec- tive education, the fact that there has been no great national centre of thought, Trinity being the University of a class, and Maynooth in substance a Technical College. Industrial life can only be built on the foundation of industrial education, and so far in Ireland, while the want has been felt, there have been no means to meet it. These three bonds—politics, religion, and a defective education—have bound her in the past. Having got no comfort from her old creeds, she must
recast the foundations of her faith. It is precisely the problem which faced Scotland after the Forty-five showed her that no help could be got from without. She turned back upon herself, and through the uneventful years of the middle eighteenth century built up slowly a commercial, educational, and social fabric of her own. So, too, with Ireland :- " We have been too long a prey to that deep delusion, which, because the ills of the country we love were in past days largely caused from without, bids us look to the same source for their cure The field for that great work is clear of at least the worst of its many historic encumbrances. Ireland must be re- created from within. The main work must be done in Ireland, and the centre of interest must be Ireland. When Irishmen realise this truth, the splendid human power of their country, so much of which now runs idly or disastrously to waste, will be utilised ; and we may then look with confidence for the founda- tion of a fabric of Irish prosperity, framed in constructive thought, and laid enduringly in human character."
To make use of the new conviction was the task of Sir Horace Plunkett and those associated with him. Much was meantime being done by other agencies, notably by the Gaelic League, to the excellence of whose work he pays generous tribute. His own business was not with the poetry of Irish literature and tradition, but with the prose of economic fact, which he saw to be the basis of any lasting reform. One national trait came to his assistance. The Irish people have in a high degree the " associative" qualities; the in- dividual may be ineffective, but the group is a force. " If, owing to our deficiency in the individualistic qualities of the English, we cannot at this stage hope to produce many types of the ' economic man' of the economists, we think we see our way to provide, as a substitute, the economic association."
" Organised self-help." The phrase sums up the principle on which Sir Horace Plunkett and his friends have conducted their experiment. We do not propose to retell the story of the movement from its first beginnings in the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society (which now represents nearly half-a- million persons), through the deliberations of the Recess Committee, down to the formation of the Irish Depart- ment of Agriculture and Technical Instruction. We would recommend every one to read the story for himself in this book, or, better still, in the many publications of the Department. Nothing could be more admirable than the way in which the reformers have gone to the root of things, and sought remedies for distress, not in subsidies or artificial assistance, but in a far-reaching scheme of educational and moral reform. No more interesting essay in constructive statesmanship has been published in our time. It is primarily, as we have said, an exposition of principles rather than a summary of results, for the work is still in its infancy, and requires rather a diagnosis of its problems than a history of its successes. But some day, we hope, Sir Horace Plunkett may write a book like Lord Milner's England in Egypt, in which he will have no need to argue his case, but merely to report accomplishment. Meanwhile we are grateful to him for a luminous and engrossing book, full of that enlightened optimism which is the first requisite of a reforming statesman.
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