created." That is sound sentiment and sound sense. It is the
view taken by the Colonies, where Irishmen are known, respected, and
understood, and where the support for Home Rule, based on personal
experience of its blessings, has been, and remains, consistent and
strong. Indeed, we miss the significance of that support if we do not
realize that Irish Home Rule is an indispensable preliminary to the
closer union of the various parts of the Empire. Let us add the wider
generalization that it is an indispensable preliminary to the closer
union of all the English-speaking races. It may be fairly computed that
a fifth of the present white population of the United States is of Irish
blood.[40] American opinion, as a whole, so far as it is directed
towards Ireland and away from a host of absorbing domestic problems, is
favourable to Home Rule. Irish-American opinion has never swerved,
although it has become more sober, as the material condition of Ireland
has improved, and the interests of Irish-Americans themselves have
become more closely identified with those of their adopted country.
Fenianism is altogether extinct. The extreme claim for the total
separation of Ireland from Great Britain is now no more than a
sentimental survival among a handful of the older men, of the fierce
hatreds provoked by the miseries and horrors of an era which has passed
away.[41] Even Mr. Patrick Ford and the _Irish World_ have moderated
their tone, and where that tone is still inflammatory it is not
representative of Irish-American opinion. I have studied with a good
deal of care the columns of that journal for some months back, smiling
over the imaginary terrors of the nervous people on this side of the
Atlantic who are taught by their party Press to believe that Mr. Patrick
Ford is going to dynamite them in their beds. Any liberal-minded student
of history and human nature would pronounce the whole propaganda
perfectly harmless. But the sane instinct that Ireland should have a
local autonomy of her own, an instinct common to the whole brotherhood
of nations which have sprung from these shores, lasts undiminished and
takes shape, quite rightly and naturally, as it takes shape in the
Colonies, in financial support of the Nationalist party in Ireland.
Anti-British sentiment in the United States, once a grave international
danger, is that no longer; but it does still represent an obstacle to
the complete realization of an ideal which all patriotic