on is extravagant.' So that, one might add, the
Englishman is doubly personal, first as an individual and again as
a member of the most highly individualised of nations. The moment
the national interest is involved all dissensions cease, there is
on the scene but one single man, one single Englishman, who shrinks
from no expedient that may advance his ends. Morality for him
reduces itself to one precept: Safeguard at any cost the interest
of England."

Like all foreigners he takes Ireland as the one conspicuous and flaming
failure of England. In that instance she has muddled, as usual, but she
has not muddled through.

"The Anglo-Saxons, those great colonisers of far-off lands, have in
their own United Kingdom succeeded only in inflicting a long
martyrdom on Ireland. The insular situation of England had for
pendant the insular situation of Ireland; the two islands lie there
face to face. The English and the Irish, although intellectually
very much alike, have preserved different characters. And this
difference cannot be due essentially to the racial element, for
nearly half Ireland is Germanic. It is due to traditions and
customs developed by English oppression."

Having summarised the main lines of British policy in Ireland, he
concludes:

"It is not easy to detect here any sign of the 'superiority of the
Anglo-Saxons.'"

With Fouillee we may associate Emile Boutmy. In his "Political
Psychology of the English" he declares that the haughty, taciturn,
solitary, unassimilative temperament of England, so admirable from the
point of view of self-development, shows its worst side and comes to a
malign florescence in the history of Ireland. It explains why

"the relations of Ireland with England have been, for so many
centuries, those of a captive with his jailer, those of a victim
with his torturer."

I pass over De Beaumont, Von Raumer, Perraud, Paul-Dubois, Filon, Bonn.
The considerations already adduced ought to be enough to lead the
English reader to certain conclusions which are fundamental. For the
sake of clearness they may be repeated in all their nudity:

England has failed in Ireland.

Her failure has been due to defects of her own character, and
limitations of her outlook. The same defects which corrupted her policy
in the past distort her vision in the present.

Therefore, if she is to understand