What Ireland Wants

BEFORE I went to Ireland I imagined the Irish standing in a crowd with their right hands pointing to heaven and all of them demanding home rule. But talk about shades of opinion and political differences at home, why, it's nothing to the mixture here.

I meet a man to-day and as I shake his hand I tell him with heartfelt sympathy that I hope he'll get home rule, that most of us are with him in the United States, and he wrings my hand and tells me that American sympathy is the thing that has kept Ireland up.

My bosom swells with pride and I feel that I have hit on just the right phrase to use.

Next day I meet another Irishman, a Protestant from Belfast, and as I wring his hand with emotional fervor, I tell him that I hope he'll get home rule, and he pulls his hand from my grasp to bring it down on desk or counter or table with impetuosity, as he says, "Ireland doesn't want home rule. If the phrase had never been coined Ireland would be happy to-day. What Ireland wants is less sympathy from outsiders. If my child bumps his head and begins to cry, I say, 'Sure it's nothing. Brave boys like to bump their heads,' and he begins to laugh and forgets about it. But if a stranger says, 'Poor Patsy. It must hurt awfully,' then he sets up a howl about it and fancies he's injured. What Ireland needs is to forget her troubles and her political disabilities and work. An Irish workingman in Ireland is the laziest man alive. When he goes to America or Canada or Australia and is released from priestly authority he's a hard worker and a success, but Paddy in the fields is always looking for saints' days—and finding them—and when he finds them he takes a holiday."

I am silent because I really know so little about it, but next day I meet another Protestant and I say to him, "I suppose it's Rome rule that is killing Ireland?"

He's up in the air at once and tells me that it is the priests who are interesting the peasants in the revival of industries long dormant.

"Aren't the priests fine-looking men?" says he.

"Yes," breaks in another Irishman, "and they ought to be the fathers of families. All that good blood going to waste and their lines ending with them instead of enriching the blood of Ireland in future generations. That's what celibacy does."

Another Irishman chimes in, "Oh, the priests are not such a fine lot. The constabulary are, I'll admit, but the most of them are as useless as the priests. Most of their time is spent training canaries, for there's little else for them to do in the country districts. But the priests; sure a man says, 'Oh, Jimmy's no good at all at all. Let's make a priest of him.'"

"It's folly you're talking," says the one who spoke for the priests. "There's not a finer body of men in Ireland than the priests."

"Oh," says the other, with Irish wit, "there's white sheep in every fold, I'll admit, but if Ireland was free from political and religious domination, she'd be able to stand upright and she wouldn't need home rule."

All of which is very perplexing to the man who came to Ireland thinking that with the exception of a few Orangemen all Ireland was working morning, noon, and night for home rule.

Next day I meet a man I know to be a Protestant and I say to him in my easy-going way (being all things to all men when I am traveling, in order to save wear and tear), "The Catholic religion is keeping Ireland back, is it not?"

He looks at me for a moment and then a spiritual light illumines his eyes and he says: "Protestantism is always death to arts. Look at Shakespeare, the last Catholic that England had, as you might say, and look at his work with its artistry, its absence of dogmatism, and then look at Protestant and tiresome Wordsworth and Protestant and didactic Tennyson. Spenser was a great artist. Spenser was a Catholic. Catholicism emancipates the artistic side of a man's nature, puritanism seals it up, dams it, condemns him to preach sermons.

"The Irish are the most artistic people on the face of the earth when Protestantism has not been allowed to stamp their idealism out of them."

"But I thought you were a Protestant. Then I suppose that you think that the priests——"

"I think that the priests ought never to be allowed to tamper with education. Spiritually they release Irishmen from puritan fetters (I speak as a Protestant and the son of a Protestant) but politically and educationally they are millstones about Ireland's neck."

I leave him and going to Hibernia Hall in Dublin, where the work of Irish industries is being displayed, and where stands temporarily St. Gaudens's splendid statue of Parnell, and I see there Augustine Birrell, whom I believe to be one of Ireland's warmest and truest friends.

I am talking to a handsome six-foot priest.

"Ah, there's Birrell," I say to him.

"Yes," says he with a twinkle in his Irish eyes, "'twould be a fine chance to drop a little dynamite under him."

I leave the hall hurriedly and listen outside for the explosion, meanwhile wondering why a priest who wants home rule hates Birrell, who has tried to give Ireland a modified version of it.

I meet a literary Catholic and ask him whether home rule would mean Rome rule and he tells me that it would not; that the Catholics would not stand for priestly interference with politics; that the priests themselves would not desire to interfere.

Next day I ask a jarvey if he wants home rule and he says, "Begorry, higher wages would be better. I'd not be botherin' with home rule if there was enough to keep me sons busy."

"Well, Michael, would home rule mean Rome rule?"

"Sure it would. Isn't the pope the head of the church?"

Ireland seems to be a house divided against itself.

I like the father of the family very much. We'll say he comes from the south of Ireland and is a Catholic. He's a witty man, a hospitable man, a cheery man, but won't speak to his oldest son, because he's a Belfast Unionist and believes in letting well enough alone.