hatreds
equal those caused by the denial or obstruction of national aptitudes.
Many of those who fought in the last Irish insurrection were fighters
not merely for a political change but were rather desperate and
despairing champions of a culture which they held was being stifled from
infancy in Irish children in the schools of the nation. They believe
that the national genius cannot manifest itself in a civilization and
is not allowed to manifest itself while the Union persists. They wish
Ireland to be as much itself as Japan, and as free to make its own
choice of political principles, its culture and social order, and
to develop its industries unfettered by the trade policy of their
neighbors. Their mood is unconquerable, and while often overcome it
has emerged again and again in Irish history, and it has perhaps more
adherents today than at any period since the Act of Union, and this
has been helped on by the incarnation of the Gaelic spirit in the modern
Anglo-Irish literature, and a host of brilliant poets, dramatists and
prose writers who have won international recognition, and have increased
the dignity of spirit and the self-respect of the followers of this
tradition. They assert that the Union kills the soul of the people; that
empires do not permit the intensive cultivation of human life: that
they destroy the richness and variety of existence by the extinction of
peculiar and unique gifts, and the substitution therefor of a culture
which has its value mainly for the people who created it, but is as
alien to our race as the mood of the scientist is to the artist or poet.

5. The third group occupies a middle position between those who desire
the perfecting of the Union and those whose claim is for complete
independence: and because they occupy a middle position, and have taken
coloring from the extremes between which they exist they have been
exposed to the charge of insincerity, which is unjust so far as the best
minds among them are concerned. They have aimed at a middle course, not
going far enough on one side or another to secure the confidence of the
extremists. They have sought to maintain the connection with the empire,
and at the same time to acquire an Irish control over administration
and legislation. They have been more practical than ideal, and to their
credit must be placed the organizing of the movements which secured most
of the reforms in Ireland since the Union, such as religious equality,
the