there
is no national pride. Because there is no national pride our modern
civilizations show meanly compared with the titanic architecture of the
cities and majestic civilizations of the past. We know from the ruins of
these proud cities that he who walked into ancient Rome, Athens, Thebes,
Memphis and Babylon, walked amid grandeurs which must have exalted the
spirit. To walk into Manchester, Sheffield, or Liverpool is to feel a
weight upon the soul. There is no national feeling for beauty in our
industrial civilizations.

Let us suppose Ireland had through industrial conscription about fifty
thousand young men every year at its disposal under a national works
department. What could be done? First of all it would mean that every
young man in the country would have received an industrial training of
some kind. The work of technical instruction could be largely carried on
in connection with this industrial army. People talk of the benefit of
discipline and obedience secured by military service. This and much more
could be secured by a labor conscription. Every man in the island would
have got into the habit of work at a period of life when it is most
necessary, and when too many young men have no serious occupation.
Parents should welcome the training and discipline for their children,
and certificates of character and intelligence given by the department
of national works should open up prospects of rapid employment in
the ordinary industrial life of the country when the period of public
service was closed. For those engaged there would be a true comradeship
in labor, and the phrase, "the dignity of labor," about which so much
cant has been written, would have a real significance where young men
were working together for the public benefit with the knowledge that any
completed work would add to the health, beauty, dignity, and prosperity
of the State. In return for this labor the State should feed and clothe
its industrial army, educate them, and familiarize them with some branch
of employment, and make them more competent after this period of service
was over to engage in private enterprise. Two years of such training
would dissipate all the slackness, lack of precision, and laziness
which are so often apparent in young men who have never had any strict
discipline in their homes, and whom parental weakness has rendered unfit
for the hard business of life.

The benefit to those undergoing such a training would of itself