or Norman-Saxon, but a new race. We should recognize our moral identity.
It was apparent before the war in the methods by which Ulstermen and
Nationalists alike strove to defend or win their political objects.
There is scarce an Ulsterman, whether he regards his ancestors as
settlers or not, who is not allied through marriage by his forbears
to the ancient race. There is in his veins the blood of the people who
existed before Patrick, and he can look backward through time to the
legends of the Red Branch, the Fianna and the gods as the legends of
his people. It would be as difficult to find even on the Western Coast a
family which has not lost in the same way its Celtic purity of race. The
character of all is fed from many streams which have mingled in them and
have given them a new distinctiveness. The invasions of Ireland and the
Plantations, however morally unjustifiable, however cruel in method, are
justified by biology. The invasion of one race by another was nature's
ancient way of reinvigorating a people.

Mr. Flinders Petrie, in his "Revolutions of Civilization," has
demonstrated that civilization comes in waves, that races rise to a
pinnacle of power and culture, and decline from that, and fall into
decadence, from which they do not emerge until there has been a crossing
of races, a fresh intermingling of cultures. He showed in ancient Egypt
eight such periods, and after every decline into decadence there was an
invasion, the necessary precedent to a fresh ascent with reinvigorated
energies. I prefer to dwell upon the final human results of this
commingling of races than upon the tyrannies and conflicts which made it
possible. The mixture of races has added to the elemental force of
the Celtic character a more complex mentality, and has saved us from
becoming, as in our island isolation we might easily have become, thin
and weedy, like herds where there has been too much in-breeding. The
modern Irish are a race built up from many races who have to prove
themselves for the future. Their animosities, based on past history,
have little justification in racial diversity today, for they are a new
people with only superficial cultural and political differences, but
with the same fundamental characteristics. It is hopeless, the dream
held by some that the ancient Celtic character could absorb the new
elements, become dominant once more, and be itself unchanged. It is
equally hopeless to dream the Celtic element could