ers in
Ireland, does not strengthen, especially among the younger generation,
which grows increasingly Nationalist, the sentiment for Home Rule. If it
did not, we should indeed be in the presence of something miraculously
abnormal.

Meanwhile the Celtic revival does visible good. The language is no
longer a fad; it is an envied accomplishment, a mark of distinction and
education. Wherever it goes, North and South, it obliterates race and
creed distinctions, and all the terrible memories associated with them.
There are Ulstermen of Saxon or Scottish stock in whom the fascination
of Irish art and literature has extirpated every trace of Orangeism and
all implied in it. The language revivifies traditions, as beautiful as
they are glorious, of an Ireland full of high passions and stormy
domestic feuds, but united in sentiment, breeding warriors, poets,
lawgivers, saints, and fertilizing Europe with her missionary genius.
However far those times are, however grim and pitiful the havoc wrought
by the race war, it is nevertheless a fact for thinkers and statesmen
to ponder over, not a phantasy to sneer at, that Celtic Ireland lives.
Anglicization has failed, not because Celts cannot appreciate the
noblest manifestations of English genius in art, letters, science, war,
colonization, but because to repress their own culture and nationality
is at the same time to repress their power of appreciation and
assimilation. Until comparatively recent times, it was only the worst of
English literature and music, the cheapest newspaper twaddle, the
inanest music-hall songs, which penetrated beyond a limited circle of
culture into the life of the country. The revolt against this
sterilizing and belittling side of anglicization is strong and healthy.
It affects all classes. Farmers, labourers, small tradesmen, who had
never conceived the idea of learning for learning's sake, and who had
grown up, thanks to the national system of education, in all but
complete ignorance of their own country's history and literature, spend
time on reading and study and in the practice of the old indigenous
dances and music, which was formerly wasted in idleness or dissipation.
Temperance and social harmony are irresistibly forwarded. Nor is it a
question of a few able men imposing their will on the many, or of an
artificial, State-aided process. Though the language has obtained a
footing in more than a third of the State schools and in the National
University