,[57] the motive force behind it comes from the people
themselves. In the country district, with which I am best acquainted,
boys and girls from very poor families are clubbing together to pay
instructors in the Irish language and dances, and the same thing is
going on all over Ireland.

The brilliant modern school of poets and playwrights who, steeped in the
old Celtic thought and culture, have found for it such an exquisite
vehicle in the English tongue, speak for themselves and are winning
their own way to renown. The only criticism I venture to make is that
some of them are too much inclined to look backward instead of forward,
to idealize the far past rather than to illuminate the future, and to
delineate the deformities of national character produced by ages of
repression, rather than to aid in conjuring into being a virile, normal
nation.

The name of the last movement to be referred to sums up all the others,
Sinn Fein. Unlike the others, it had a purely political origin, and for
that reason, probably, never made the same progress. Yet the explanation
is simple. In pursuance of the general purpose of inspiring Irishmen to
rely on themselves for their own salvation, economic and spiritual, Sinn
Feiners, like John Mitchel and others in the past, and like the
Hungarian patriots, attacked, with much point and satire, the whole
policy of constitutional and Parliamentary agitation for Home Rule. The
policy, they said, had failed for half a century; it was not only
negative and barren, but positively harmful. Nationalists should refuse
to send Members to Westminster and abide by the consequences. Sensibly
enough, most Irishmen, while recognizing that there was an element of
indisputable and valuable truth in this bold diagnosis, decided that it
was premature to adopt the prescription. Public opinion in Britain was
slowly changing, and confidence existed that this opinion would be
finally converted. If the Sinn Fein alternative meant anything at all,
it meant complete separation, which Ireland does not want, and a final
abandonment of constitutional methods. If another Home Rule Bill were to
fail, Sinn Fein would undoubtedly redouble its strength. Its ideas are
sane and sound. They are at bottom exactly the ideas which actuate every
progressive and spirited community, and which in Ireland animate the
Industrial Development Associations, the Co-operative movement, the
thirst for technical instruction, the Gaelic League,