The Ireland of To-Morrow

The great tragedy of present day Ireland is that most of her greatest Sons are not here to see her victory. We rejoice over the expulsion of the foreigner from our shores while we mourn that most of those who won the splendid victory are absent. Death has claimed many of them—exile has claimed others—few are here to guide the tottering footsteps of our infant nation, few of them are left to us in the hour of our need.

Perhaps it is as well they are not here. It would indeed be small thanks to them to see the fruits of their splendid sacrifice turned to such sorry use, to see the land they hoped for, fought and schemed for, turned not into the Gaelic nation of their dreams, but into a state, subject to England, and modelled on her. For I think that even the optimistic will be forced to conclude that our country still remains and seems likely to remain “John Bull’s other Ireland.”

One would have thought that having gained even a partial measure of Freedom we should model our nation on the traditions of which, in theory, we are so proud. Those patriots who expected the establishment and fostering of a Gaelic culture based on our historic past have been sorely disappointed. It would seem that seven hundred years of British aggression and British influence have proved too much for us and even here in the capital of the Gaeltacht the hoped for reaction has not taken place.

“One slave alone on earth you’ll find

Through Nature’s universal span

All lost to virtue, dead to shame,

The anti-Irish Irishman’’

Though the British military have gone a more deadly foe is in out midst, the anti-Irish Irishman. The Irish proverb “Gan Teanga, Gan Tír” is only too true. An army, a navy, or an air force may, if they are strong enough, protect a nation’s territory but the guardian of a nation’s life is its language. If that is true, and most will grant that it is, then the national life of Ireland is still in a bad way. To realize exactly how bad we need only look around its. As regards Irish, the language that was preserved for us at such an awful cost, there seems to be lethargy and indifference where there is not ridicule or open hostility. This is regrettable but it is true, and yet the sad plight of our native tongue is not the worst feature in our national lethargy.

The national out-look on what might almost be called the national “motif” is of the highest importance and I hold that our national out-look, as such, is decidedly anti-national. We are given to modelling ourselves, in the small things as in the big, on our late oppressors. For several centuries we had their example constantly paraded before us and we have not yet learned to turn from it to the example reflected in our wealth of traditions. We are bound to England by an oath of allegiance but I know of no oath forbidding us to become a separate entity, that is, a land with a language, customs, and an out look of its very own.

Now that I have out-lined the disease, what of the cure? It is easy to find fault; it is difficult to prescribe adequately. Yet those who claim that they can govern a country, who claim that they have “Ireland’s greatest statesman” among their ranks, should undoubtedly be able to cure its ills. Surely it’s the duty of any and every Irish Government to foster nationality. Ireland is often held to resemble Denmark in many ways. There is a further point of resemblance I would like to point out. “I attribute” said a Danish statesman last year, “our present happy and prosperous condition to the fact that when regeneration was needed—when our land was a prey to foreign influence—we went back to the sacred founts of tradition—we fed on the glories, the customs, and the culture of our positive greatness.’’ Who will deny that, like Denmark of the seventies, regeneration is what Ireland most needs.

As yet we have seen but the first faint glimmerings of light in the dawn of Irish freedom. No one knows what the mature day may bring with it - no one knows what the setting sun shall have seen, but one thing we do know. If Ireland continues in her present course she may one day be a very fine state, though I doubt it, but she will 1ose all semblance to a nation - and surely it is the ardent hope and prayer of every true Irish man and woman that their land will possess individuality and nationality above all things.

D.M.W.