t by men whose lives were more or less
secure, and ... "Of course!" he exclaimed in his mind. "That's the
secret of the whole thing! When our people have had security for life as
long as these people have had it, their houses will be as good as these
are, and their farms as rich and clean and comfortable!"

One had only to remember the history of Ireland to realise that many of
the differences between the English and the Irish were no more than the
differences between the hunter and the hunted, the persecutor and the
persecuted. How could the Irish help having a lower standard of life
than the English when their lives had been so disrupted and disturbed
that it was difficult for them to have a standard of life at all? Now,
when the disturbance was over and security of life had been obtained
(after what misery and bitterness and cruel lack of common
comprehension!) the Irish would soon set up a level of life that might
ultimately be higher than that of the English.

"Of course," said Henry, remembering something that his father had said,
"there'll be a Greedy Interval!"

The Greedy Interval, the first period of prosperity in Ireland when the
peasants, coming suddenly from insecurity and poverty to safety and
well-being, would claw at money like hungry beasts clawing at food, had
been the subject of many arguments between Mr. Quinn and John Marsh, Mr.
Quinn maintaining that greed was the principal characteristic of a
peasant nation, inherent in it, inseparable from it.

"Look at the French," he had said on one occasion. "By God, they buried
their food in their back-gardens rather than let their hungry soldiers
have it in the Franco-German War! Would an aristocrat have done that,
John Marsh? They saw their own countrymen who had been fighting for
them, starving, and they let them starve!..."

It was the same everywhere. "I never pass a patch of allotments," he
said, "without thinkin' that their mean, ugly, _little_ look is just
like a peasant's mind, an' begod I'm glad when I'm past them an' can see
wide lands again!" Peasants were greedy, narrow, unimaginative, lacking
in public spirit. In France, in Belgium, in Holland and Russia, in all
of which countries Mr. Quinn had travelled much, there was a peasant
spirit powerfully manifested, and almost invariably that manifestation
was shown in a mean manner.

"That's what your wonderful Land Laws are going to do for Ireland!" Mr.
Quinn had exclaimed scornfully. "_We're_