gland, particularly among the thousands of Irish-Americans who are
born over here and whose fathers have become too Americanized to
remember the sufferings of their ancestors.

"There is still some hatred of England, but not very much. It is a
sentimental, a poetic hatred, not a political hatred. One finds it among
a few individuals. What agitation is now going on is secret and
underground, a sure proof that it is unrepresentative. We ignore it. It
means nothing. No; the passing of the Home Rule bill has given balance
to the Irish mind.

"It has helped Irish-Americans to realize that the dreadful sins of
England are sins of a dead and gone England, and it has helped them to
see that the present England, so far as its democracy is concerned,
sincerely desires to make reparation for the past. In fact, the war and
the Home Rule bill together have produced such a transformation in the
Irish-American nature as I, for one, never expected and never hoped to
see."

He then warned me that this great change might suffer a dangerous
reaction if England allows the religious bigotry of Ulster to split
Ireland into two camps. To the Irish-American Ireland is a country, a
home, and a shrine, one and indivisible.

"Such a surrender," said my friend, "would not only be fatal to Ireland
but fatal to something even greater than Ireland, and that is the cause
of religion in an age of increasing paganism. For the world can only be
saved from the ruin of paganism, as we are beginning to see very clearly
in America, by a union of religious forces.

"I am a Catholic, but I say that any man who says 'Only through my door
can you enter into heaven' is a bad Christian. There are many doors into
heaven. What we have all got to do, Catholics and non-Catholics, is to
insist together that there is a heaven, that there is a life after
death, that there is a God. The more doors the better. No one has a
monopoly of heaven.

"And to Ireland is offered the opportunity, greater than politicians
appear to perceive, of presenting to the world an example of tolerance
and compromise in the supreme interests of religion which may have
incalculable results for the whole world. But what will happen if
England bows before the worst and the stupidest bigotry the modern world
can show? Not only will you strike a blow at Ireland and a blow at
Irish-American sympathy, but a blow at the vitals of religion.

"For it is only by sinking religious differences and m