he whole,
I do not incline to accept the parallel in that sense any more than in
the opposite sense. For reasons I have already given elsewhere, I do
believe that in the main Abraham Lincoln was right. But right in what?

If Lincoln was right, he was right in guessing that there was not
really a Northern nation and a Southern nation, but only one American
nation. And if he has been proved right, he has been proved right by the
fact that men in the South, as well as the North, do now feel a
patriotism for that American nation. His wisdom, if it really was
wisdom, was justified not by his opponents being conquered, but by their
being converted. Now, if the English politicians must insist on this
parallel, they ought to see that the parallel is fatal to themselves.
The very test which proved Lincoln right has proved them wrong. The very
judgment which may have justified him quite unquestionably condemns
them. We have again and again conquered Ireland, and have never come an
inch nearer to converting Ireland. We have had not one Gettysburg, but
twenty Gettysburgs; but we have had no Union. And that is where, as I
have remarked, it is relevant to remember that flying fantastic vision
on the films that told so many people what no histories have told them.
I heard when I was in America rumours of the local reappearance of the
Ku-Klux Klan; but the smallness and mildness of the manifestation, as
compared with the old Southern or the new Irish case, is alone a
sufficient example of the exception that proves the rule. To approximate
to any resemblance to recent Irish events, we must imagine the Ku-Klux
Klan riding again in more than the terrors of that vision, wild as the
wind, white as the moon, terrible as an army with banners. If there were
really such a revival of the Southern action, there would equally be a
revival of the Southern argument. It would be clear that Lee was right
and Lincoln was wrong; that the Southern States were national and were
as indestructible as nations. If the South were as rebellious as
Ireland, the North would be as wrong as England.

But I desire a new English diplomacy that will exhibit, not the things
in which England is wrong but the things in which England is right. And
England is right in England, just as she is wrong in Ireland; and it is
exactly that rightness of a real nation in itself that it is at once
most difficult and most desirable to explain to foreigners. Now the
Irishman, and to s