may in a brief epoch become a European question.

With the approaching disappearance of the Near Eastern question (which
England is hastening to the detriment of Turkey) a more and more
pent-in Central Europe may discover that there is a Near Western
question, and that Ireland--a free Ireland--restored to Europe is the
key to unlock the western ocean and open the seaways of the world.

Again it is Mr. Gladstone who comes to remind Englishmen that Ireland,
after all, is a European island, and that Europe has some distant
standing in the issue.

"I would beseech Englishmen to consider how they would behave to
Ireland, if instead of having 5,000,000 of people, she had 25,000,000;
or if instead of being placed between us and the ocean she were placed
between us and the Continent." (Notes and queries on the Irish Demand,
February, 1887.) While the geographical positions of the islands
to each other and to Europe have not changed, and cannot change,
the political relation of one to the other, and so the political
and economical relation of both to Europe, to the world and to the
carrying trade of the world and the naval policies of the powers may
be gravely altered by agencies beyond the control of Great Britain.

The changes wrought in the speed and capacity of steam shipping, the
growth and visible trend of German naval power, and the increasing
possibilities of aerial navigation, all unite to emphasize the
historian Niebuhr's warning, and to indicate for Ireland a possible
future of restored communion with Europe, and less and less the
continued wrong of that artificial exclusion in which British policy
has sought to maintain her--"an island beyond an island."

Chapter IX

THE ELSEWHERE EMPIRE

Every man born in Ireland holds a "hereditary brief" for the opponents
of English sway, wherever they may be. The tribunal of history in his
own land is closed to him; he must appeal to another court; he must
seek the ear of those who make history elsewhere. The Irishman is
denied the right of having a history, as he is denied the right of
having a country. He must recover both. For him there is no past any
more than a future. And if he seeks the record of his race in the only
schools or books open to him he will find that hope has been shut out
of the school and fame taken out of the story.

The late John Richard Green, one of the greatest of English
historians, was attracted to Ireland by a noble sympathy for the