d
the functions of demand and supply in relation to the Department's work
throughout Ireland were brought into proper adjustment with each other.
Yet, even at first, to a sympathetic and understanding view, the waste
of time and thought involved in dealing with impossible projects and
dispelling false hopes was compensated for by the evidence forced upon
us that the Irish people had no notion of regarding the Department as an
alien institution with which they need concern themselves but little,
however much it might concern itself with them. They were never for a
moment in doubt as to its real meaning and purpose. They meant to make
it their own and to utilise it in the uplifting of their country. No
description of the machinery of the institution could explain the real
place which it took in the life of the country from the very beginning.
But perhaps it may give the reader a more living interest in this part
of the story, and a more living picture of the situation, if I try to
convey to his mind some of the impressions left on my own, by my
experiences during the period immediately following the projection of
this new phenomenon into Irish consciousness.

When in Upper Merrion-street, Dublin, opposite to the Land Commission,
big brass plates appeared upon the doors of a row of houses announcing
that there was domiciled the Department of Agriculture and Technical
Instruction, the average man in the street might have been expected to
murmur, 'Another Castle Board,' and pass on. It was not long, however,
before our visiting list became somewhat embarrassing. We have since got
down, as I have said, to a more humdrum, though no less interesting,
official life inside the Department. But let the reader imagine himself
to have been concealed behind a screen in my office on a day when some
event, like the Dublin Horse Show, brought crowds in from the country to
the Irish capital. Such an experience would certainly have given him a
new understanding of some then neglected men and things. While I was
opening the morning's letters and dealing with "Files" marked "urgent,"
he would see nothing to distinguish my day's work from that of other
ministers, who act as a link between the permanent officials of a
spending Department and the Government of the day. But presently a
stream of callers would set in, and he would begin to realise that the
minister is, in this case, a human link of another kind--a link between
the people and the