The Open Secret of Ireland | Page 3

defeated, but of an indomitable and victorious people.

Chapter IV
exhibits the Home Rule idea as a fundamental law of nature, human
nature, and government.

Chapters
V and VI contain a very brief account of the more obvious economic
crimes and blunders of Unionism.

Chapter VII
discusses the queer ideas of "Ulster," and the queer reasons for the
survival of these ideas.

Chapter VIII
demonstrates that, as a mere matter of political technique, Home Rule
must be conceded if any real government is ever to exist again, whether
in Great Britain, in Ireland, or in the Empire.

Chapter IX
dips into the future, and indicates that a Home Rule Ireland will have so
much interesting work to do as to have no time for civil war or
religious oppression.

Chapter X
shows that everybody who values "loyalty" must of necessity be a
Home Ruler.
The only moral commended to the reader is that expressed by
Browning in a firm and inevitable line, which has been disastrously
forgotten in so many passages of English history:--
"It's fitter being sane than mad."
I have tried also to convey to him, with what success others must judge,
something of the "pride and passion" of Irish nationality. That is, in
truth, the dream that comes through the multitude of business. If you
think that Home Rule is a little thing which must be done in a little way
for little reasons, your feet are set on the path to failure. Home Rule is

one of those fundamental reforms that are not achieved at all unless
they are achieved greatly.
T.M.K.
_December, 1911_.

THE OPEN SECRET OF IRELAND

CHAPTER I
AN EXERCISE IN HUMILITY
In order to understand Ireland we must begin by understanding England.
On no other terms will that complex of facts, memories, and passions,
which is called the Irish Question, yield up its secret. "You have always
been," said a Lady Clanricarde to some English politician, "like a high
wall standing between us and the sun." The phrase lives. It reveals in a
flashlight of genius the historical relations of the two nations. It
explains and justifies the principle adopted as the basis of this
discussion, namely, that no examination of the Irish Problem is possible
without a prior examination of the English mind. It used to be said that
England dearly loved a Lord, a dictum which may have to be modified
in the light of recent events. Far more than a Lord does the typical
Englishman love a Judge, and the thought of acting as a Judge.
Confronted with Ireland he says to himself: "Here are these Irish people;
some maintain that they are nice, others that they are nasty, but
everybody agrees that they are queer. Very good. I will study them in a
judicial spirit; I will weigh the evidence dispassionately, and give my
decision. When it comes to action, I will play the honest broker
between their contending parties." Now this may be a very agreeable
way of going about the business, but it is fatally unreal. Great Britain
comes into court, she will be pained to hear, not as Judge but rather as
defendant. She comes to answer the charge that, having seized Ireland
as a "trustee of civilisation," she has, either through incompetence or
through dishonesty, betrayed her trust. We have a habit, in everyday
life, of excusing the eccentricities of a friend or an enemy by the
reflection that he is, after all, as God made him. Ireland is politically as
Great Britain made her. Since the twelfth century, that is to say for a

great part of the Middle Ages and for the whole of the modern period,
the mind of England and not that of Ireland has been the dominant fact
in Irish history.
This state of things--a paradox in action--carries with it certain
metaphysical implications. The philosophers tell us that all morality
centres in the maxim that others are to be treated as ends in themselves,
and not as instruments to our ends. If they are right, then we must
picture Ireland as the victim of a radical immoralism. We must think of
her as a personality violated in its ideals, and arrested in its
development. And, indeed, that is no bad way of thinking: it is the one
formula which summarises the whole of her experience. But the
phrasing is perhaps too high and absolute; and the decline and fall of
Mr Balfour are a terrible example to those of us who, being young,
might otherwise take metaphysics too solemnly. It will, therefore, at
this stage be enough to repeat that, in contemplating the discontent and
unrest which constitute the Irish difficulty, Great Britain is
contemplating the work of her own hands, the creation of her