t the way in which the organisation at the same
time acted upon the character and awoke those forces of self-help and
comradeship in which lies the surety of any enduring national
prosperity. A native governor from a famine district in the Madras
Presidency, who, perhaps, better than any one realised the importance
of these human factors, because the lethargy of his own people had
forced it on his notice, said, when he was referred to the Department of
Agriculture and Technical Instruction for information, "Oh, don't speak
to me about Government Departments. They are the same all over the
world. I come here to learn what the Irish people are doing to help
themselves and how you awaken the will and the initiative." I hope to
show later that State assistance properly applied is not necessarily
demoralising but very much the reverse. It is consoling, too, to our
national pride, long wounded by contemptuous references to our
industrial incapacity as compared with our neighbours, to find that our
latest efforts are regarded by them as worthy of imitation. From the
other side of the Channel no less than five County Councils have sent
deputations of farmers to Ireland to study the progress of the movement,
and already an English Organisation Society, expressly modelled upon its
Irish namesake, has been established and is endeavouring to carry out
the same work.

It is not surprising that the facts which I have cited should be
interesting to the honest inquirer. A summary of actual achievement will
show that this movement has spread all over Ireland, that its principle
of organised self-help has been universally accepted, and that nothing
but time and the necessary funds are required by its promoters to give
it, within the range of its applicability, general effect. It is no
exaggeration to say that there has been set in motion and carried
beyond the experimental stage a revolution in agricultural methods which
will enable our farmers to compete with their rivals abroad, both in
production and in distribution, under far more favourable conditions
than before. Alike in its material and in its moral achievements this
movement has provided an effective means whereby the peasant proprietary
about to be created will be able to face and solve the vital problems
before it, problems for which no improvement in land tenure, no rent
reductions actual or prospective, could otherwise provide an adequate
solution. Furthermore, nothing could