The Open Secret of Ireland | Page 4

own mind.
For that reason we can make no progress until we ascertain what sort of
mind we have to deal with.
I do not disguise from myself the extremely unpleasant nature of this
inquiry. It is as if a counsel were to open his address by saying:
"Gentlemen of the Jury, before discussing the facts of the case I will
examine briefly the mental flaws, gaps, kinks, and distortions of you
twelve gentlemen." There is, however, this difference. In the analysis
upon which we are engaged the mental attitude of the jury is not merely
a fact in the case, it is the whole case. Let me reinforce my weaker
appeal by a passage from the wisest pen in contemporary English
letters, that of Mr Chesterton. There is in his mere sanity a touch of
magic so potent that, although incapable of dullness, he has achieved
authority, and although convinced that faith is more romantic than
doubt, or even sin, he has got himself published and read. Summarising
the "drift" of Matthew Arnold, Mr Chesterton observes:
"The chief of his services may perhaps be stated thus, that he
discovered (for the modern English) the purely intellectual importance

of humility. He had none of that hot humility which is the fascination
of saints and good men. But he had a cold humility which he had
discovered to be a mere essential of the intelligence."
Such a humility, purely hygienic in character, is for Englishmen the
beginning of wisdom on the Irish Question. It is the needle's eye by
which alone they can enter a city otherwise forbidden to them. Let there
be no misunderstanding. The attitude of mind commended to them is
not without its agreeable features. Closely scrutinised, it is seen to be a
sort of inverted vanity. The student begins by studying himself, an
exercise in self-appraisal which need not by any means involve
self-depreciation. What sort of a mind, then, is the English mind?
If there is anything in regard to which the love of friends corroborates
the malice of enemies it is in ascribing to the English an individualism,
hard-shelled beyond all human parallel. The Englishman's country is an
impregnable island, his house is a castle, his temperament is a suit of
armour. The function common to all three is to keep things out, and
most admirably has he used them to that end. At first, indeed, he let
everybody in; he had a perfect passion for being conquered, and
Romans, Teutons, Danes, and Normans in succession plucked and ate
the apple of England. But with the coming of age of that national
consciousness, the bonds of which have never been snapped, the
English entered on their lucky and courageous career of keeping things
out. They possess in London the only European capital that has never
in the modern period been captured by an invader. They withstood the
intellectual grandeur of Roman Law, and developed their own medley
of customs into the most eccentric and most equitable system in the
world. They kept out the Council of Trent, and the Spanish Armada.
They kept out the French Revolution, and Napoleon. They kept out for
a long time the Kantian philosophy, Romanticism, Pessimism, Higher
Criticism, German music, French painting, and one knows not how
many other of the intellectual experiments that made life worth living,
or not worth living, to nineteenth-century Europe. Their insularity,
spiritual as well as geographical, has whetted the edge of a thousand
flouts and gibes. "Those stupid French!" exclaims the sailor, as
reported by De Morgan: "Why do they go on calling a cabbage a shoe

when they must know that it is a _cabbage?_" This was in general the
attitude of what Mr Newbolt has styled the "Island Race" when on its
travels. Everybody has laughed at the comedy of it, but no one has
sufficiently applauded its success. The English tourist declined to be at
the trouble of speaking any foreign tongue whatsoever; instantly every
hotel and restaurant on the Continent was forced to learn English. He
refused to read their books; a Leipsic firm at once started to publish his
own, and sold him his six-shilling Clapham novels in Lucerne for two
francs. He dismissed with indignation the idea of breakfasting on a roll,
and bacon and eggs were added unto him. In short, by a straightforward
policy of studying nobody else, he compelled everybody else to study
him.
Now it is idle to deny this performance the applause which it plainly
deserves. The self-evolution of England, as it may perhaps be called, in
its economic, political, and literary life, offers an admirable model of
concentration and energy. Even where it is a case of obtuseness to other
civilisations, at least as high but of a different type, the verdict cannot
be