ry remembered
how Marsh had generalised about the English. "They live on their
instincts," he had said. "They never live on their minds!" and he had
quoted from an article in an English newspaper in which the writer had
lamented over the decline and fall of intellect among his countrymen.
The writer declared that no one would pay to see a play that made a
greater demand upon the mind than is made in a musical comedy, and that
even this slight demand was proving to be more than many people could
bear: the picture palace was destroying even the musical comedy.

"But are we any better than that?" Henry had asked innocently, and
Marsh, indignant, had declared that the Irish were immeasurably better
than _that_.

"But are we?" Henry asked himself as the train swiftly moved towards
London.

And through his mind there raced a long procession of questions for
which he could not find answers. His mind was an active, searching mind,
but it was immature, and there were great gaps in it that could only be
filled after a long time and much experience. He had not the knowledge
which would enable him to combat the opinions of Marsh, but some
instinct in him caused him to believe that Marsh's views of England and
Ireland were largely prejudiced views. "I don't feel any less friendly
to Gilbert and Ninian and Roger than I do to John Marsh or any other
Irishman, and I don't feel that John understands me better than they
do!" That was the pivot on which all his opinions turned. He could only
argue from his experience, and his experience was that this fundamental
antagonism between the Irish and the English, on which John Marsh
insisted, did not exist. When Marsh declared passionately that he did
not wish to see Ireland made into a place like Lancashire, he was only
stating something that many Englishmen said with equal passion about the
unindustrialised parts of England. Gilbert Farlow denounced mill-owners
with greater fury than Mr. Quinn denounced them.... It seemed to Henry
that he could name an English equivalent for every Irish friend he had.

"There are differences, of course," he said to himself, remembering the
silent company of passengers who shared his compartment, "but they don't
matter very much!"

"I wish," he went on, "John Marsh weren't so bitter against the English.
Lots of them would like him if he'd only let them!"

He looked out of the window at the wide fields and herds of cattle and
comfortable farmhouses, buil