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WHY GOD LOVES THE IRISH 
 
Clean literature and clean 
 womanhood are the keystones 
 of civilization: — this aphoris- 
 tically defines the ideals of 
 The Devin-Adair imprint. 
 
siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin 
 
 WHY GOD LOVES 
 THE IRISH 
 
 By 
 HUMPHREY J. DESMOND, LL.D. 
 
 " Inflamed with the study of learning 
 and the admiration of virtue; stirred 
 up with high hopes of living to be 
 brave men and worthy patriots, dear 
 to God and famous to all ages." 
 
 — Milton. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 THE DEVIN- ADAIR COMPANY 
 
 iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiim 
 

 Copyright, 1918. by 
 The Devin-Adair Compant 
 
 All rights reserved by the Devin-Adair Company 
 
 MAR 1 1 1918 
 ©CI.A494U0? 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Foreword vii 
 
 Appreciation xv 
 
 I. Saints and Scholars . . 3 
 
 II. Undying Nationhood . . 15 
 
 III. The Leaven of Democracy 33 
 
 IV. The Sea-divided Gael . . 53 
 V. Wit and Grit 73 
 
 VI. Irish Idealism ... 95 
 
E 
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 By Joseph I. C. Clarke 
 President-General of the American Irish His- 
 torical Society 
 
 VERYBODY with a heart that 
 beats with the love of humanity at 
 large, no less than the Irish themselves, 
 will find joy and refreshment in this 
 demonstration by our author of a theme 
 so unconsciously daring as "Why God 
 Loves the Irish." His treatment of the 
 problem involved amply relieves the Al- 
 mighty of making the slightest mistake 
 in His well-known preference for the 
 branch of the Celtic race which made 
 Ireland its home and a fresh point of 
 departure for capturing the esteem and 
 [vii] 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 love and good things of the rest of the 
 world. 
 
 In the clearer light of the higher 
 thought things steal upon the vision that 
 to the grosser senses in the poorer glow 
 of what is aptly called "common" sense 
 had an altogether different aspect. 
 There are Irish writers who pass their 
 time dwelling on the misfortunes of their 
 race. Not so Mr. Desmond. He sees 
 something better, something finer, some- 
 thing infinitely cheering in it all. And 
 he tells it in his own way, making the 
 reader his accomplice before he is aware 
 of it. When he has won you to admira- 
 tion by some startling fact in the world- 
 round Irish story, he drops in an Irish 
 anecdote, a welcome quip, a bit of quot- 
 ed epigram that wakens a laugh or at 
 least a sympathetic smile to testify to 
 [viii] 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 your enjoyment. And the modest bulk 
 of his book shows that he has trusted to 
 the force and cogency and not the ex- 
 hausting length of his argument. Read 
 it and discover it all. 
 
 The author's theme will awaken many 
 grave minds to some wrestling with the 
 olden question of the human aspect of 
 God's providence. How many have 
 avoided seeking a conclusion thereon, 
 and have left it among the unsolvable 
 mysteries! Even those who, in the rap- 
 tures of piety, adore the Creator as 
 the divine, all embracing principle of 
 love and question not His duress to His 
 creatures, seek no solution this side of 
 the grave of the hard fate meted out so 
 often to His deserving children. Our 
 author does not refer the question to the 
 next world so far as the Irish are con- 
 [ix] 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 cerned, and he has perspicacity enough 
 to see that by a parallel road the Jews, 
 so long-suffering through the ages, are 
 marching along with the Celts of Ire- 
 land to new and greater victories than 
 marked their story of old. The process 
 modernises the equation. 
 
 A learned Japanese chemist has been 
 lately proclaiming that the subtle fla- 
 vors of all our staple foods are simply 
 slight variants of a single definite sub- 
 stance whose presence is to be accounted 
 for as Dame Nature's sly recommenda- 
 tion to the human palate of all things 
 truly edible. No doubt at all the ingre- 
 dients of the Irish soul include a similar 
 essence, and its richness is to my mind 
 one of the proofs of what our author so 
 powerfully and merrily contends for — 
 the love of God for the Irish. 
 
 w 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 One of the great defenses of the Irish 
 even in Ireland's darkest century was 
 their sense of humor. And what an as- 
 set is an indestructible cheerfulness ! He 
 who laughs at fate will outlive it. He 
 surely has something beside, some su- 
 perior fibre of being that will tell in 
 time. But God's love of the Irish, de- 
 spite their material plight and their long 
 cheerless outlook to other eyes, was 
 shown when He imbedded in their na- 
 ture courage, devotion to ideals, and a 
 love of learning that never was crushed 
 out and failed not even when access to 
 the founts of knowledge was denied 
 them for a couple of hundred years. 
 Here, then, was a stored soul energy, a 
 latent brilliancy of intellect, both await- 
 ing a providential lifting of the weight 
 of oppression. It came, as it had to 
 come. 
 
 [xi] 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 The Irish who left Ireland soon 
 proved that the Celt had conquering ele- 
 ments and winning qualities to make 
 rosy his way. What figure of power 
 and intellect Irishmen have made in 
 the world, and particularly in our great 
 Republic of America, must answer, in 
 the light of fame, for such rude con- 
 quest as the peoples, luckier materially, 
 have made in masses with the sword. 
 The American Irish have a record to be 
 proud of. How aptly our author quotes 
 Chesterton: "Rome has conquered na- 
 tions, but Ireland has conquered 
 races." 
 
 One joins heartily in the author's 
 glorying in the risen fortunes of the 
 Gael and his pervasive and cheery pres- 
 ence in posts of honor and emolument all 
 round the globe — posts won by brain- 
 [xii] 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 power and sustained by physical power 
 that is and has been his trade-mark— 
 the invariable accompaniment of the 
 stalwart reproductiveness of his race. 
 Nothing that I know of has touched this 
 off more happily than the lines in T. 
 C. Irwin's wonderful " Potato-Digger's 
 Song": 
 
 As the great sun sets in glory furled, 
 
 Faith, it's grand to think as I watch his face, 
 
 If he never sets on the English world, 
 He never, lad, sets on the Irish race. 
 
 [xiii] 
 
APPRECIATION 
 
 By Maurice Francis Egan 
 Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipo- 
 tentiary of the United States to 
 Denmark 
 
 COMING back to God's own coun- 
 try, not in the best of health or 
 spirits, I find a glimpse of real enjoy- 
 ment in Desmond's "Why God Loves 
 the Irish." Much of my early educa- 
 tion had taught me that God loved the 
 Jews, — in Philadelphia we still read the 
 Old Testament, — but I had never been 
 taught that He specially loved the Irish, 
 though I knew that they loved Him, — 
 principally because they felt that one 
 day He would properly chastise the 
 
 [XV] 
 
APPRECIATION 
 
 English! But that is past now; and 
 Desmond has made me understand seri- 
 ously why God loves the Irish; for one 
 reason they are in love with perfection 
 and consequently, in love with God. 
 
 Every Irish father who wants his 
 children to he proud of the good Mood 
 in them would do well to buy this little 
 volume; it will make better Americans 
 of them, and make them understand 
 that they must live up to the traditions 
 of a great race. 
 
 I am filled with envy when I think 
 that it is a descendant of those foreign- 
 ers, the Desmonds, who is moved to 
 write this enchanting book. It ought to 
 Have been an out-and-out Celt; — but, 
 nevertheless, it will help people, like the 
 O'Sullivans and the MacEgans and the 
 Murphys and the O'Reillys, to forget 
 [xvi] 
 
APPRECIATION 
 
 that these Desmonds were ever Nor- 
 mans. 
 
 It is no use for men of Irish blood to 
 imagine that their children will under- 
 stand the value of the qualities of that 
 blood, unless they are taught something 
 of its glories. 
 
 Let me thank you for sending the vol- 
 ume to me ; it will save me the wear and 
 tear of choosing proper Christmas and 
 birthday gifts for the rest of my life. 
 
 [xvii] 
 
"The nations have fallen, and thou still art 
 young; 
 Thy sun is but rising, when others are set; 
 And tho' slavery's cloud o'er thy morning 
 hath hung, 
 The full noon of freedom shall beam round 
 thee yet. 
 Erin, O Erin, tho' long in the shade, 
 Thy star will shine out when the proudest 
 
 shall fade." 
 
 — Moore. 
 
WHY GOD LOVES THE IRISH 
 
SAINTS AND SCHOLARS 
 
SAINTS AND SCHOLARS 
 
 WE spent a few hours with 
 Michael Davitt, one afternoon, 
 during his last visit to this country. The 
 conversation drifted to the topic nearest 
 his heart — the future of the Irish people 
 the world over, and especially their so- 
 cial betterment. 
 
 Some facts of the United States cen- 
 sus were then fresh in our mind, in con- 
 nection with a study we were making 
 of Irish immigration. We thought it 
 would interest Mr. Davitt to have the 
 figures of the United States census, 
 showing that Irish- Americans, propor- 
 
 [3] 
 
WHY GOD LOVES THE IRISH 
 
 tionately, led all other Americans in one 
 special vocation — that of teaching. 
 
 There were fifty per cent, more Irish- 
 Americans acting as guardians of the 
 law in the capacity of policemen, than 
 there were Irish- American liquor deal- 
 ers. And there were three times as 
 many Irish-American teachers as there 
 were Irish- American policemen. 
 
 This information was very pleasing 
 to Mr. Davitt, who said: 
 
 "It is racial ! It is characteristic ! It 
 is the old function of the Celt reassert- 
 ing itself. We were once 'the Isle of 
 Saints and Scholars.' We taught Eu- 
 rope. They tried to degrade us with 
 penal laws and landlordism, but these 
 things are passing and we are reassert- 
 ing ourselves. We belong in the school- 
 rooms of the world !" 
 [4] 
 
SAINTS AND SCHOLARS 
 
 It is a far cry from the twentieth back 
 to the seventh and ninth centuries, when 
 Ireland was "the light of Western Eu- 
 rope" ; but the testimony in the case may 
 be found in the pages of many erudite 
 German and French writers. 
 
 "Till the Norse invasion broke over 
 Ireland, at the end of the eighth cen- 
 tury, the Irish Church was, both in 
 learning and in missionary enthusiasm, 
 the pioneer of European progress," says 
 Prof. J. Howard Masterman, M. A. of 
 Oxford, in his "Rights and Responsi- 
 bilities of National Churches," p. 5 
 (1908). 
 
 This time the wise men came from the 
 West, and not only as missionaries, but 
 as teachers. Irish bishops occupied sees 
 in France, Germany, Switzerland, and 
 Italy, a chain of Irish monasteries ex- 
 [5] 
 
WHY GOD LOVES THE IRISH 
 
 tended from Brittany to Bulgaria, and 
 the names of more than two hundred 
 Irish saints went upon the calendar of 
 Christendom. 
 
 The Irish saint next in repute to St. 
 Patrick — St. Columbkille — made Iona 
 the island fortress of western Christian- 
 ity, from which, for a hundred years, is- 
 sued a stream of missionaries and teach- 
 ers. It was upon his visit to this spot, 
 many centuries later, that Dr. Johnson 
 wrote the resounding words : "That man 
 is little to be envied whose patriotism 
 would not gain force on the plains of 
 Marathon or whose piety would not 
 grow warmer among the ruins of Iona." 
 
 Northern England, as well as Scot- 
 land, was evangelized by Irish monks, 
 and hundreds of English students 
 crossed the Irish Sea to study in Irish 
 [6] 
 
SAINTS AND SCHOLARS 
 
 colleges. By what perverse fate do 
 we find other Englishmen, a thousand 
 years later, coming to Ireland to stamp 
 out her fires of learning by acts of Par- 
 liament ! The penal laws not only ban- 
 ished the priest, but they outlawed the 
 schoolmaster. The rudiments of educa- 
 tion had to be retained by stealth : 
 
 Within the lonely rath, beneath the moun- 
 tain fern, 
 The schoolmaster and scholar met, felo- 
 niously to learn. 
 
 This incorrigible people could not be 
 reduced to ignorance, because they 
 could not forget their heritage of learn- 
 ing and the tradition that they once held 
 the intellectual hegemony of Europe. 
 So to-day and in the years immediately 
 preceding the present great European 
 [7] 
 
WHY GOD LOVES THE IRISH 
 
 war, our immigration officials report 
 that of the army of Irish immigrants 
 landing at our ports, but slightly over 
 one per cent, are illiterate. 
 
 Our literature teems with eulogies of 
 the Puritans and the Huguenots, be- 
 cause of the sturdy moral qualities they 
 developed out of trials and persecu- 
 tions. The Irish and the Jews passed 
 through far more drastic ordeals; but 
 because there is not that clear thinking 
 which perceives, above all prejudice, 
 that the admirable thing is the heroism 
 of the struggle, rather than one's par- 
 ticular liking for the principles or the 
 beliefs preserved^ the Irishman and the 
 Jew have not been adequately appreci- 
 ated. They do not, however, themselves 
 fail in mutual recognition of the higher 
 altitudes they occupy. 
 [8] 
 
SAINTS AND SCHOLARS 
 
 A Jewish mayor in an Iowa city made 
 the opening address at St. Patrick's 
 church fair. He paralleled what the 
 Jews and the Irish had endured to pre- 
 serve their faiths. He grew eloquent 
 over the fidelity of the Irish; like the 
 Jews, they had sat by the rivers of 
 Babylon and wept as they remembered 
 Zion. "And, my friends, let me say, in 
 conclusion, that I was born a Jew, I 
 have lived a Jew, and in all probability 
 I will die a Jew; but if ever I should 
 have occasion to change my religion, I 
 would become an Irish Catholic." 
 
 The Irish race preferred their con- 
 science and their religion to peace and 
 prosperity. That is, fundamentally, 
 the preference which leads a man of 
 honor to adhere to his principles even at 
 the cost of advancement and emolu- 
 [9] 
 
WHY GOD LOVES THE IRISH 
 
 merit. In the valuations of citizenship, 
 one such man is worth ten other men of 
 sordid motive and apathetic spirit. The 
 ordeal by which the Irish as a race have 
 proven themselves — their steadfastness 
 to their beliefs — should justify a high 
 appraisal of their qualifications for citi- 
 zenship, particularly in the matter of 
 moral courage. And this has been ex- 
 emplified wherever the Irishman has 
 been put to the test ; this glory has been 
 upon his head: that of a man whose 
 courage in the hour of danger can al- 
 ways be relied upon. 
 
 If an oppressed people feel that they 
 are standing up for a spiritual as well 
 as a temporal cause, not only is their re- 
 sistance more heroic, but the ordeal is 
 better endured. There is less damage to 
 the character and morale of a race thus 
 [10] 
 
SAINTS AND SCHOLARS 
 
 tried in a furnace of persecution seven 
 times heated. 
 
 Their religion conserved for the Irish 
 the soul of civilization; and so long as 
 they held to it, their tyrants found it im- 
 possible to press them down into a con- 
 dition of abject slavery. Had the op- 
 pressors succeeded in stifling the reli- 
 gion of the Irish, the consequences 
 would have been most disastrous. The 
 character of the nation would have been 
 lowered. The renegade spirit would 
 run into all other convictions and rela- 
 tionships. 
 
 Their morality has been preserved, as 
 well as their manliness, by fidelity to 
 faith. Their wonderful power of re- 
 cuperation amid the surroundings of 
 liberty and progress is due to the latent 
 
 [ii] 
 
WHY GOD LOVES THE IRISH 
 
 civilization contained in their virile 
 Christianity. 
 
 An Irish American priest, Father 
 Shealy, puts the case this way: "The 
 one awful failure to a nation is to fall 
 from her ideals, to give up striving, to 
 sell her soul to power and avarice or 
 aught that serves the sordid sway of 
 pride and passion. That, indeed, is fail- 
 ure which succeeds at the price of virtue 
 and honor. 
 
 "Ireland might have been rich and 
 favored. She might have merged her 
 identity and her faith in an alien empire 
 and alien worship. But she fought and 
 died; she starved and agonized; and in 
 defeat she has conquered. Her spirit 
 still lives on." 
 
 [12] 
 
UNDYING NATIONHOOD 
 
II 
 
 UNDYING NATIONHOOD 
 
 SUPPOSE that the well-prepared 
 invasion of France in those weeks 
 following August 1, 1914, had not been 
 turned back at the battle of the Marne, 
 and that the blond superman of the 
 north had come to possess and perma- 
 nently rule over the fair fields of 
 France. 
 
 In the course of a century the Ger- 
 man schoolmaster might be teaching 
 Europe that this great conquest was the 
 triumph of the civilization of the Elbe 
 and the Vistula over the disorganized 
 civilization of the Seine, — Teutonic effi- 
 [15] 
 
WHY GOD LOVES THE IRISH 
 
 ciency prevailing as a question of su- 
 perior Kultur over Gallic individualism 
 and decadence. 
 
 Let the centuries roll on, and how the 
 past glories of the conquered fade and 
 are obliterated under the mastership of 
 those who are making history, — and 
 writing it! "Where, to-day, are the 
 great cities of antiquity?" exclaimed an 
 Irish orator, — "perished so utterly that 
 it is doubtful whether they ever ex- 
 isted." A thousand years hence, Na- 
 poleon might be a legend, Austerlitz or 
 Jena smiled at as myths, and the salons 
 of Paris and the art galleries of Ver- 
 sailles as forgotten as "the harp that 
 once thro' Tara's halls the soul of music 
 shed." 
 
 How easily might the theory come 
 to prevail among the dominant Ger- 
 [16] 
 
UNDYING NATIONHOOD 
 
 mans of A. D. 3000 that the rebellious 
 French, reduced economically to hewers 
 of wood and drawers of water, were 
 totally unfit for self-government! 
 
 This is the situation from which the 
 Irish have been emerging. The British 
 middle class, who, according to Mat- 
 thew Arnold, "exhibit a narrow range 
 of intellectual knowledge, a stunted 
 sense of beauty, and a low standard of 
 manners," have always felt divinely 
 called to impose their will as a benevo- 
 lent despotism upon the Irish. 
 
 At a time when Edmund Burke was 
 hailed as a great statesman, when 
 George III. had publicly thanked him 
 for his "Reflections on the French Rev- 
 olution," and that book was lying on the 
 table of every great house in England, 
 Burke, with his increased prestige, was 
 [17] 
 
WHY GOD LOVES THE IRISH 
 
 besought by an Irish friend to use his 
 opportunity and do something for Ire- 
 land ; but he replied that as regards Ire- 
 land he was absolutely without in- 
 fluence. They would let him help rule 
 England and rearrange Europe, but 
 they would not take a suggestion from 
 this cleverest of Irishmen as to Irish 
 affairs. That epitomizes the reason- 
 ableness of English doubt of Irish fit- 
 ness for self-government. 
 
 As late as 1825, Sydney Smith de- 
 clared that "the moment the very name 
 of Ireland is mentioned, the English 
 seem to bid adieu to common feeling, 
 common prudence, and common sense, 
 and to act with the barbarity of tyrants 
 and the fatuity of idiots." 
 
 "It is," said Judge Morris (once head 
 of the Irish bench), "the case of a very 
 [18] 
 
UNDYING NATIONHOOD 
 
 unimaginative people attempting to 
 govern a very imaginative and clever 
 people, and you see the result." Eng- 
 land finds Ireland intractable, — 
 
 The lovely and the lonely bride 
 
 That we have wedded, but have never won. 
 
 Victory is not always an essential to 
 glory, otherwise the heroism at Ther- 
 mopylae would not have been the pride 
 of Greece for all generations. 
 
 The Irish, as a nation, have not fared 
 fortunately in the jostle of times and 
 events. Ireland has been described as 
 "the Niobe of nations," 
 
 Childless and crownless in her voiceless 
 
 woe. 
 
 But there must be stamina in a race 
 that, banished and massacred, hunted 
 [19] 
 
WHY GOD LOVES THE IRISH 
 
 and famine-plagued, has kept the flag 
 of its nationality flying through so many 
 vicissitudes; notwithstanding which, it 
 still has the vitality of a new life about 
 it: 
 
 Beauty's ensign yet is crimson in her lips 
 
 and in her cheek, 
 And death's pale flag is not advanced 
 
 there. 
 
 The late Governor Robert L. Taylor, 
 of Tennessee, after a survey of Ire- 
 land's heroic struggle for nationality, 
 has this appreciation: 
 
 "If I were a sculptor I would chisel 
 in marble my ideal of a hero. I would 
 make it the figure of an Irishman sac- 
 rificing his hopes and his life on the 
 altar of his country, and I would carve 
 [20] 
 
UNDYING NATIONHOOD 
 
 on its pedestal the name of Robert 
 Emmet. 
 
 "If I were a painter I would make 
 the canvas eloquent with the deeds of 
 the bravest people who ever lived, whose 
 proud spirit no power can ever conquer 
 and whose loyalty and devotion to the 
 hopes of free government no tyrant can 
 ever crush. And I would write under 
 the picture 'Ireland.' 
 
 "If I were a poet, I would touch the 
 heart of humanity with the mournful 
 threnody of Ireland's wrongs and 
 Erin's woes. I would weave the sham- 
 rock and the rose into garlands of glory 
 for the Emerald Isle, the land of mar- 
 tyrs and memories, the cradle of heroes, 
 the nursery of liberty." 
 
 A great American commander was 
 [21] 
 
WHY GOD LOVES THE IRISH 
 
 much applauded for fighting it out on 
 one line "if it took all summer." The 
 Irish have backed the principle of Home 
 Rule through forty summers of hope 
 and winters of disappointment, "never 
 doubting that the clouds would break." 
 If this is not an evidence of the real 
 moral force of the race, where is there a 
 better test? Many things happened to 
 turn them from their stern chase; but 
 their tenacity of purpose never wavered. 
 Even their enemies must concede them 
 the distinction implied. 
 
 The Ulster Irish also are a tenacious 
 people. They come of Covenanter 
 stock. They showed it at the siege of 
 Derry. But Ulster tenacity is faced 
 by Irish Nationalist tenacity — older, 
 stronger, deeper, more patient, and — » 
 undying. 
 
 [22] 
 
UNDYING NATIONHOOD 
 
 It is not improbable that northeast 
 Ulster may change its views in the com- 
 ing years. There are many broad and 
 patriotic Irish Protestants. They dom- 
 inated the situation as patriotic Irish- 
 men in 1782, and they yielded scores 
 of heroes in 1798. The tenacity of 
 the north-of-Ireland Protestants may 
 change its base and display itself in bet- 
 ter policies. 
 
 But the tenacity of the Irish Nation- 
 alist will never let go of its cherished 
 aim and purpose. It is destined to be 
 the triumphant tenacity — "face for- 
 ward" for all time, resolving, 
 
 Never to look behind me for an hour, 
 To wait in weakness and to walk in power. 
 But always fronting onward to the light, 
 Always and always facing toward the right, 
 [23] 
 
WHY GOD LOVES THE IRISH 
 
 Robbed, starved, defeated, fallen, wide 
 
 astray, 
 On with what strength I ha' r e. 
 
 John Mitchel, himself an Ulster Pro- 
 testant, wrote: "The passionate aspi- 
 ration of Ireland for freedom will out- 
 live the British Empire." 
 
 Marshall P. Wilder, famous among 
 New Yorkers as an after-dinner 
 speaker, often repeated an Irishman's 
 toast to an English friend: "Here's to 
 you, as good as you are; and here's to 
 me, as bad as I am. But as good as you 
 are and as bad as I am, I am as good 
 as you are as bad as I am." This senti- 
 ment may be applied to the government 
 of Ireland. Let the Irish' try it them- 
 selves. Let them have riotous elections 
 if necessary. Let them have Kilkenny 
 [24] 
 
UNDYING NATIONHOOD 
 
 parliaments. Let the Speaker of the 
 House use a shillalah for a gavel. Let 
 the honorable member from Donny- 
 brook "hurl the foul insinuations of the 
 honorable member from Drogheda back 
 into the throat of the cowardly de- 
 famer." 
 
 Even so. With all this lack of de- 
 corum, the Irish could not make a worse 
 failure of the government of Ireland 
 than have the English. Even in the 
 enlightened nineteenth century the 
 English attempt to govern Ireland has 
 been a record of coercion and famine, 
 eviction and depopulation, jury-pack- 
 ing, suppression of public meetings, and 
 the jailing of Ireland's best patriots. 
 No ; even a Donnybrook fair would rule 
 Ireland with better wisdom and better 
 results. 
 
 [25] 
 
WHY GOD LOVES THE IRISH 
 
 In the dawning of a better England, 
 the Irishman has been called to rule 
 nearly every portion of the British Em- 
 pire except his native soil. Speaking 
 at Quebec in 1878, Lord Dufferin, an 
 Irishman, then Governor-General of 
 Canada, genially observed: 
 
 "There is no doubt that the world is 
 best administered by Irishmen. Things 
 never went better with us, either at 
 home or abroad, than when Lord Pal- 
 merston ruled Great Britain, Lord 
 Mayo governed India, Lord Monck di- 
 rected the destinies of Canada, and the 
 Robinsons, the Kennedys, the Laffans, 
 the Callaghans, the Gores, the Hennes- 
 sys administered the affairs of our Aus- 
 tralian colonies and West Indian pos- 
 
 sessions." 
 
 [26] 
 
UNDYING NATIONHOOD 
 
 So, in the process of the solution of 
 the Irish land question, the final and 
 drastic measure of relief came through 
 the constructive talent of George 
 Wyndham, a great-grandson of an 
 Irish rebel of 1798. Mr. Wyndham's 
 Land Act of 1903, says Sir Horace 
 Plunkett, was put through Parliament 
 by "the masterly tact, temper and abil- 
 ity" with which he handled the situa- 
 tion. 
 
 There is a story of the father of Han- 
 nibal, the Carthaginian general, that he 
 took his son into one of the temples of 
 the African city and induced him to 
 swear upon the altar never to make 
 peace with the Roman people, but to 
 wage incessant warfare against them 
 until their pride should be humbled. 
 
 History tells us how well Hannibal 
 [27] 
 
WHY GOD LOVES THE IRISH 
 
 kept his promise. He laid plans for 
 years. Then he swept the Romans out 
 of Spain. He crossed the Alps and 
 routed one Roman army after another 
 until his soldiers were in sight of the 
 walls of Rome. Had he gone right 
 ahead and not paused before attacking 
 the ancient London, he might have con- 
 quered effectually. 
 
 Hannibal's purpose of enmity is 
 cherished by every descendant of the 
 Irish race without the formula of an 
 oath. Everywhere to meddle with the 
 designs of England ; everywhere to beat 
 down her power; everywhere to nullify 
 her treaties and to interfere with her 
 friendships; everywhere to injure her 
 commerce — such is the instinctive spirit 
 of the race. It is a taste for world-wide 
 mischief. 
 
 [28] 
 
UNDYING NATIONHOOD 
 
 In the seat of peace tumultuous wars 
 Shall kin with kin, and kind with kind con- 
 found. 
 Prevent it, resist it, let it not be so, 
 Lest child, child's children cry against you, 
 Woe ! — Shakespeare. 
 
 Anglo-Saxons may talk of a "com- 
 mon Shakespeare," and great leaders 
 may speak of a "kin beyond the sea," 
 but the presence of an element running 
 into the millions ; following the English- 
 man everywhere; becoming more intel- 
 ligent and more effective ; more wealthy 
 and more astute; holding the bal- 
 ance of power in English-speaking leg- 
 islatures, and stealing into the courts 
 and navies of great nations, cannot be 
 overlooked. There is an "irrepressible 
 conflict." There must be a final settle- 
 ment. 
 
 [29] 
 
THE LEAVEN OF 
 DEMOCRACY 
 
Ill 
 
 THE LEAVEN OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 EVERYBODY recalls "II Bacio," 
 a famous waltz song composed by 
 Arditi in the middle of the last cen- 
 tury. He tells us that this wistful 
 melody came to him during a vacation 
 among the hills and valleys of western 
 Ireland. 
 
 He jotted it down on an envelope 
 and later finished it at the request of 
 a great soprano whose engagement he 
 was managing in England and who 
 wished a new song. The song was an 
 instant success. Arditi did not grow 
 [33] 
 
WHY GOD LOVES THE IRISH 
 
 rich out of it, but it made him famous. 
 The music publishers reaped the har- 
 vest. Flaxman, who bought the French 
 rights, made one hundred thousand dol- 
 lars out of the winsome song, and he 
 pointed to a fine building in Paris as a 
 monument to his profits. 
 
 How many other melodies have 
 sounded and sobbed through the iEo- 
 lian harp of the Irish hills and valleys, 
 to be caught up and made world-pos- 
 sessions, but without credit! How 
 many fine fancies, how many germinal 
 ideas, how many moving thoughts have 
 come to mankind in like manner from 
 the life and lore of the same people! 
 
 Henry George got the germ of his 
 
 "Progress and Poverty" from the 
 
 writings of the Irish recluse, J. Fintan 
 
 Lalor. Karl Marx came to London in 
 
 [34] 
 
LEAVEN OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 the mid-60's to write his bible of So- 
 cialism from texts found in the works 
 of the Irishman, William Thomson — 
 so says Dr. Anton Menger, professor 
 of jurisprudence in the University of 
 Vienna. Neal Dow, the father of pro- 
 hibition, is quoted as saying that he got 
 his inspiration from Father Mathew. 
 
 And so we may conjecture with 
 more or less plausibility "adown the 
 ages": Copernicus may have studied 
 that old ecclesiastical controversy of 
 the eighth century, wherein the Irish 
 bishop, Virgilius, argued the sphericity 
 of the earth; Columbus may have been 
 inspired by the "Voyages of St. Bren- 
 dan," of which there were many trans- 
 lations in his time; and Dante, as a 
 widely read man, may have been famil- 
 iar with the legend of St. Patrick's 
 [35] 
 
WHY GOD LOVES THE IRISH 
 
 Purgatory, which might well have sug- 
 gested the "Inferno." 
 
 A brilliant Irish-American, Ignatius 
 Donnelly, has complained that the 
 greater part of history is simply "re- 
 corded legends," while the rest repre- 
 sents merely "the passions of factions, 
 the hates of sects, or the servility and 
 venality of historians." In our age we 
 are rewriting history in a more instruc- 
 tive vein. 
 
 Some very practical economic topics 
 are illustrated by the experience of Ire- 
 land. The question of protection and 
 free trade has two epochs of Irish his- 
 tory related to it — that of 1782, when 
 the Volunteers inscribed on their can- 
 non, "Free Trade or — !" and that of 
 1846, when the Irish famine compelled 
 [36] 
 
LEAVEN OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 Sir Robert Peel to give up the time- 
 honored English policy of protection. 
 The gravest social question of our 
 time — the land question — is studied in 
 the Irish agitation of the past forty 
 years. The always curious topic of 
 emigration is examined under condi- 
 tions close at hand in the exodus of 
 three or four million people from Ire- 
 land during the last sixty years. The 
 student of political agitation will find 
 a picturesque interest in the monster 
 meetings organized by Daniel O'Con- 
 nell, where as many as four hundred 
 thousand people assembled and dis- 
 persed with gravity and order; and the 
 student of social betterment, a like im- 
 pressive subject in the crusade of Fa- 
 ther Mathew, who in a few years 
 [37] 
 
I 
 
 WHY GOD LOVES THE IRISH 
 
 pledged two millions of his countrymen 
 to total abstinence. 
 
 We do not assume to argue that Irish 
 history has exceptional features of in- 
 terest, although this may well be 
 claimed. What seems a reasonable po- 
 sition to take, however, is to assert that 
 this study enlightens the reader respect- 
 ing some of the profoundest topics in 
 the world's history, and that, aside from 
 more direct considerations, it well de- 
 serves attention. 
 
 The more direct considerations are 
 found in the fact that the Irish element 
 constitutes a large infusion in the Amer- 
 ican nation, and we study the history 
 of the American people best when we 
 follow them back to their ancestral 
 homes. 
 
 The Irish undoubtedly have a reli- 
 [38] 
 
LEAVEN OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 gious mission, but they also have a polit- 
 ical mission. If in one direction they 
 are the modern pioneers of Christianity, 
 in another direction they are the reli- 
 able auxiliaries of the democratic 
 movement. 
 
 About the year 1680, we find the term 
 "Tory" in English politics, and applied 
 to public men who favored leniency to 
 the Catholics. The name "Tory" orig- 
 inated in Ireland ; it was applied in the 
 sixteenth century to a kind of White- 
 boy or Ribbonman banditti of that day. 
 
 Could the spirit of Patrick Sarsfleld 
 come back to-day, it would surprise him 
 to find the Irish, once the allies of the 
 Tories, now so solidly against them. 
 Or could Oliver Cromwell revisit the 
 glimpses of the moon, he would be 
 equally surprised to find the Irish vot- 
 [39] 
 
WHY GOD LOVES THE IRISH 
 
 ing with the English party which traces 
 its ancestry back to the Roundheads of 
 the Long Parliament. 
 
 The explanation is that the Irish race, 
 originally royalist in sympathy, due to 
 their clan system and the evil star of 
 the Stuarts, have been driven by cir- 
 cumstances into the great democratic 
 movement of modern times. 
 
 Edmund Burke was a Whig. Whig 
 leaders like Fox and Sheridan were 
 more friendly to Ireland and Catholic 
 emancipation than the Tory leaders. 
 O'Connell, on entering the British Par- 
 liament, allied himself with the Whigs 
 or Liberals under the Melbourne min- 
 istry (1836-41), and he opposed the 
 succeeding Tory administration of Sir 
 Robert Peel. He found the Whigs 
 more disposed to do justice to Ireland. 
 [40] 
 
L EAVEN OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 Lecky, in his "History of England in 
 the Eighteenth Century" (chapter 
 viii.), mentions the prediction (made 
 at the time of the Union), that the 
 Irish members would range themselves 
 on the side of "the powers that he" and 
 increase the influence of the Crown; 
 and he thus proceeds: 
 
 "It need scarcely be added that the 
 influence of Irish representation has 
 proved the exact opposite of what had 
 been predicted. A majority of Irish 
 members turned the balance in favor 
 of the great democratic reform bill of 
 1832; and from that day there has 
 scarcely been a democratic measure 
 which they have not powerfully assisted. 
 When, indeed, we consider the votes 
 they have given, the principles they have 
 [41] 
 
WHY GOD LOVES THE IRISH 
 
 been the means of introducing into Eng- 
 lish legislation, and the influence they 
 have exercised on the House of Com- 
 mons, it is probably not too much to say 
 that their presence in the British Par- 
 liament has proved the most powerful 
 of all agents in accelerating the demo- 
 cratic transformation of English poli- 
 tics." 
 
 Most of the great Irish relief meas- 
 ures of the last fifty years were brought 
 in by Gladstone and his Liberal fol- 
 lowers. 
 
 The Irish are a clear-minded people, 
 and they see that democratic measures 
 like the extension of the suffrage and 
 the overthrow of the Lords strengthen 
 them as a force in British politics, and 
 lead to the gradual improvement of their 
 [42] 
 
LEAVEN OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 industrial and political status. They 
 are also a logical people, and therefore 
 recognize their duty to support liberal, 
 democratic, and humanitarian measures, 
 wherever and for whomsoever these 
 boons are invoked, as the following epi- 
 sode will illustrate : 
 
 Many years ago, when Negro slavery 
 existed in the British colonies of the 
 West Indies, a little party of three men 
 in the British Parliament began to agi- 
 tate, in season and out of season, for 
 Negro emancipation. Daniel O'Con- 
 nell, with the few Irish members who 
 supported him, threw his strength to 
 this little party on every division. There 
 was a West Indian interest pledged to 
 maintain Negro slavery, and this inter- 
 est counted twenty-seven votes in Par- 
 liament. They came to O'Connell and 
 [43] 
 
WHY GOD LOVES THE IRISH 
 
 offered to throw their twenty-seven 
 votes to him on every Irish question if 
 he would oppose Negro emancipation. 
 
 "It was," said Wendell Phillips, "a 
 terrible temptation. How many a so- 
 called statesman would have yielded! 
 O'Connell said: 'Gentlemen, God 
 knows I speak for the saddest nation the 
 sun ever sees, but may my right hand 
 forget its cunning and my tongue cleave 
 to the roof of my mouth, if to serve Ire- 
 land, even Ireland, I forget the Negro 
 one single hour!' " 
 
 There spoke the consistent lover of 
 liberty, the statesman who carried good 
 morals into politics; for, as Edmund 
 Burke says, "politics are morals in their 
 larger development." It is too costly 
 a price to pay if one conviction must 
 be debauched in order that another con- 
 [44] 
 
LEAVEN OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 viction may prosper, ^eed we wonder 
 that the profoundest of English poets, 
 Coleridge, was moved to say, having 
 O'Connell in mind: 
 
 "O for a great man— for one really 
 great man who could feel the power 
 and weight of a principle and unflinch- 
 ingly put it into action! See how tri- 
 umphant in debate and action O'Con- 
 nell is! Why? Because he asserts a 
 broad principle and acts upon it — rests 
 all his weight on it and has faith in it." 
 
 The high ideals of the great Irish 
 Liberator have been cherished by his 
 successors. 
 
 "In many ways I greatly admire and 
 sympathize with the Irish party. They 
 are brilliant parliamentarians. Both as 
 orators and as tacticians they are supe- 
 
 [45] 
 
WHY GOD LOVES THE IRISH 
 
 rior, far superior, to any other group in 
 the House of Commons. Although the 
 majority of them are poor men, ... no 
 breath of corruption has ever touched 
 their honor." 
 
 So wrote Sydney Brooks, an English 
 journalist, in the March, 1909, "North 
 American Review," in No. X. of a se- 
 ries of articles entitled, "The New Ire- 
 land." These articles are substantially 
 anti-Home Rule and anti-Nationalist, 
 though intermixed with many judicious 
 admissions. 
 
 "But," somebody will ask, "how about 
 the Irish-American politician in our 
 American cities?" 
 
 Lincoln Steffens, whose study of "the 
 graft evil" has made him a national au- 
 thority on the subject, telling the story 
 [46] 
 
LEAVEN OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 of his investigations in "McClure's 
 Magazine," says: 
 
 "When I set out on my travels, an 
 honest New Yorker told me honestly 
 that I would find that the Irish— the 
 Catholic Irish— were at the bottom of it 
 all, everywhere. 
 
 "The first city I went to was St. 
 Louis, a German city. The next was 
 Minneapolis, a Scandinavian city with 
 a leadership of New Englanders. Then 
 I came to Pittsburgh— Scotch Presby- 
 terian—and that was what my New 
 England friend was. 'Ah, but they are 
 all foreign populations,' I heard. The 
 next city was Philadelphia, the purest 
 American community of all, and this 
 was most hopeless. And after that came 
 Chicago and New York, both mongrel- 
 [47] 
 
WHY GOD LOVES THE IRISH 
 
 bred, but the one a triumph of reform, 
 and the other the best example of good 
 government that I had seen. The 'for- 
 eign element' excuse is one of the hypo- 
 critical lies that save us from the clear 
 sight of ourselves." 
 
 Bryce, in his "American Common- 
 wealth" (volume II., page 241), has a 
 paragraph of like tenor: 
 
 "The immigrants," he says, "are not 
 so largely responsible for the faults of 
 American politics as the stranger might 
 be led, by the language of many Amer- 
 icans, to believe. There is a disposition 
 on the part of Americans to use them, 
 and especially the Irish, much as the cat 
 is used in the kitchen to account for 
 the disappearance of eatables. The 
 cities, no doubt, suffered from the immi- 
 [48] 
 
LEAVEN OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 grants— but New York was not an 
 Eden before the Irish came." 
 
 When it comes to a proper study of 
 graft in its entirety, a much larger rec- 
 ord must be brought into evidence than 
 the municipal graft record. Take the 
 amount of graft put away by Tweedism 
 in New York; multiply it by ten; then 
 add the amount of graft to the discredit 
 of the Philadelphia ring, and multiply 
 that total by ten, and you will come no- 
 where near the total amount of graft 
 put away by the financial magnates of 
 the United States in constructing new 
 lines and buying and selling and bond- 
 ing small roads to the systems they con- 
 trolled. And these big graft manipula- 
 tors uniformly have names that are de- 
 cidedly not Irish. 
 
 [49] 
 
THE SEA-DIVIDED GAEL 
 
IV 
 
 THE SEA-DIVIDED GAEL 
 
 THE Irish are gone with a ven- 
 geance," said "The London 
 Times" jubilantly in the year following 
 the Irish famine. "In a short time a 
 Catholic Celt will be as rare on the 
 banks of the Shannon as a Red Indian 
 on the shores of Manhattan." Never- 
 theless, two generations later, the Celt 
 is still numerous on the banks of the 
 Shannon and on the banks of the 
 Thames also; and more numerous on 
 the shores of Manhattan than the Red 
 Indian ever was. 
 
 Nor does he forget Ireland wherever 
 [53] 
 
WHY GOD LOVES THE IRISH 
 
 he goes. He has indeed "gone with a 
 vengeance," but in a sense quite differ- 
 ent than that of "The London Times." 
 As a poet (Thomas D'Arcy McGee) of 
 that great migration wrote : 
 
 Hail to our Celtic brethren, wherever they 
 may be, 
 
 In the far woods of Oregon, or o'er the 
 Atlantic sea — 
 
 Whether they guard the banner of St. George 
 in Indian vales, 
 
 Or spread beneath the nightless North ex- 
 perimental sails — 
 One in name and in fame 
 Are the sea-divided Gaels. 
 
 A greeting and a promise unto them all we 
 
 send; 
 Their character our charter is, their glory 
 
 is our end; 
 Their friend shall be our friend, our foe 
 
 whoe'er assails 
 
 [54] 
 
THE SEA-DIVIDED GAEL 
 
 The past or future honors of the far-dis- 
 persed Gaels : 
 One in name and in fame 
 Are the sea-divided Gaels. 
 
 More Irish immigrants came to 
 America in the mid-third of the nine- 
 teenth century (1847-80), than the 
 total population of the colonies at the 
 beginning of the Revolution. Nine- 
 teenth century Irish immigration ex- 
 ceeded numerically the northern migra- 
 tions that overturned the Roman Em- 
 pire. 
 
 Irish immigration, coming, as it did, 
 almost exclusively to the northern 
 States, gave the North its preponder- 
 ance in Congress and broke down the 
 sectional equilibrium upon which the in- 
 stitution of slavery rested. Know- 
 Nothingism, which sought to shut out 
 [55] 
 
WHY GOD LOVES THE IRISH 
 
 the immigrant or prevent his naturaliza- 
 tion, was eagerly welcomed by the 
 South, but it was too late. 
 
 Draper ("American Civil War," I. 
 446) puts this opinion in the mouth of 
 a slaveholder: "The mistake with us 
 has been that it was not made a felony 
 to bring in an Irishman when it was 
 made piracy to bring in an African." 
 So there was a direct relationship be- 
 tween the Irish famine and the Eman- 
 cipation Proclamation. Except for 
 Irish immigration, the American Negro 
 would have clanked his chains for a gen- 
 eration longer. 
 
 No immigrant to our shores has been 
 more willing to forswear allegiance to 
 foreign kings and Kulturs than the 
 Irish, and none has been more ready to 
 enter upon the full duties of his Ameri- 
 [56] 
 
THE SEA-DIVIDED GAEL 
 
 can citizenship. He has never shown 
 himself apathetic or indifferent on elec- 
 tion day. He votes early — and no 
 doubt, if it were legally required, he 
 would vote often. Nor does he decline 
 civic responsibilities. On this score 
 there is, at times, complaint from people 
 who would never face a mob or fight 
 a fire, that there are too many Irish in 
 the police and fire departments. Such 
 is also the case if you will examine the 
 army and navy enlistments when the 
 country is in danger and it is necessary 
 to fill up the ranks ; but there is no com- 
 plaint about this. 
 
 Many years ago, John Randolph of 
 Roanoke said: "I have seen a white 
 crow and heard of black swans, but an 
 Irish opponent of American liberty I 
 never either saw or heard of." Irish- 
 [57] 
 
WHY GOD LOVES THE IRISH 
 
 Americans have never produced any 
 Benedict Arnolds or Aaron Burrs. 
 They have never raised the red flag 
 above the Stars and Stripes. They have 
 come upon the platform of democracy 
 with both feet and two fists. Their 
 Americanism is heart-whole, without re- 
 serve, jubilant, riant, and scintillant. 
 
 An Irish alderman at a Forefathers' 
 dinner in Boston preached the duty of 
 patriotism: "Every man," he said, — 
 "every man should love his native land, 
 whether he was born there or not." 
 
 Later immigrations have learned this 
 lesson from the Irishman's daughter 
 teaching in the public schools. In New 
 York a little son of Italy, twelve years 
 old, came to his teacher and asked if 
 he could not have his name changed. 
 [58] 
 
THE SEA-DIVIDED GAEL 
 
 "Why do you want to change your 
 name?" the teacher asked. 
 
 "I want to be an American. I live 
 in America now." 
 
 "What American name would you 
 like?" 
 
 "I have it here," he said, handing the 
 teacher a scrap of paper on which was 
 written, "Patrick Dennis McCarthy." 
 
 This seems to illustrate Chesterton's 
 remark : "Rome has conquered nations, 
 but Ireland has conquered races." The 
 Irish are a socially expansive people, be- 
 cause neighborly by nature, and always 
 ready to sympathize and serve. 
 
 "The endowments of the Celt sup- 
 plement those of the Saxon," said Gold- 
 win Smith. "What the Saxon lacks in 
 liveliness, grace, and warmth, the Celt 
 supplies. The two races, blended, pro- 
 [59] 
 
WHY GOD LOVES THE IRISH 
 
 duce a great and gifted nation." The 
 melting-pot has been blending this im- 
 migration for two centuries, and it is 
 not improbable that a third of the Amer- 
 ican people to-day have Irish blood in 
 their veins. 
 
 At times an able lawyer, who wins 
 a notable case by a brilliant speech, is 
 found crediting it to "the dash of Irish" 
 in his ancestry. The newspapers speak 
 of the same righting blood helping a 
 public man through a plucky battle for 
 principle or preferment; and again we 
 hear of the beautiful American actress 
 "with the Irish eyes," or of some charm- 
 ing woman whose wit and vivacity, ac- 
 cording to the society reporter, "come 
 naturally from an Irish grandmother." 
 
 In like manner, Irvin Cobb, arguing 
 that the Celtic strain is strong among 
 [60] 
 
THE SEA-DIVIDED GAEL 
 
 the people of the South, says: "The 
 soft speech of the Southerner; his warm 
 heart and his hot head, his readiness to 
 begin a fight and to forgive his opponent 
 afterwards ; his veneration for woman's 
 chastity and his love for the ideals of 
 his native land — all these are heritages 
 of his Irish ancestry, transmitted to him 
 through two generations." 
 
 It seems invidious, when appraising 
 Irish ability, to distinguish by counties 
 or dates of settlement what is after all 
 quite evenly distributed. Especially is 
 this so with respect to so loosely applied 
 a designation as "Scotch-Irishman" — if 
 indeed this individual may not be a 
 cousin of Sarah Gamp's friend, Mrs. 
 Harris — "which there ain't no such per- 
 son." Austin O'Malley is somewhat 
 justified in defining "Scotch Irish" as a 
 [61] 
 
WHY GOD LOVES THE IRISH 
 
 "term used in American obituary no- 
 tices to convey the information that a 
 Connaughtman died a Freemason." 
 
 Fifty years ago it was a matter of 
 regret with those who had the welfare of 
 the Irish- American element at heart, 
 that Irish immigration remained so 
 largely in the cities. We have since 
 learned to qualify this regret upon these 
 considerations: (1) Urban settlement 
 obeyed an economic law to which all im- 
 migrations submitted, the later immi- 
 grations even in a larger percentage 
 than the Irish. (2) In the heyday of 
 Irish immigration (1845-60) but one- 
 fifth of the American population dwelt 
 in cities; now fully half our population 
 is urban. (3) Cities are no longer the 
 charnel-houses of population. Under 
 improved sanitary conditions, cities are 
 [62] 
 
THE SEA-DIVIDED GAEL 
 
 about as healthful as rural districts; 
 there is little difference in the birth and 
 death rates. (4) Racial segregation is 
 less possible and Americanization more 
 feasible under the condition of city life. 
 And this, of course, is an all-round ben- 
 efit. 
 
 A glance at the place-names will show 
 that Irish immigration has widely dis- 
 tributed itself throughout the United 
 States. There are scores of American 
 Dublins, Waterfords and Belfasts; at 
 least a thousand American place-names 
 begin with Mac or O ; and, in all, nearly 
 seven thousand cities, counties, villages 
 and rivers attest by their names that the 
 Celt has been there as a pioneer and 
 town-builder. 
 
 William Butler Yeats, the Irish poet, 
 who visited this country some years ago, 
 [63] 
 
WHY GOD LOVES THE IRISH 
 
 declared that the most striking thing he 
 saw here was the number of fat Irish- 
 men. They are often fine-looking fel- 
 lows, and we can see nothing unpatriotic 
 in a people, so long exposed to famine, 
 finally exhibiting unmistakable evi- 
 dences of being well nourished. 
 
 "Englishmen, Scotchmen, Jews, do 
 well in Ireland — Irishmen never," says 
 George Moore. "Even the patriot has 
 to leave Ireland to get a hearing." 
 There is some truth in this remark. It 
 is not best even for an Irish-American 
 to confine himself to an Irish-American 
 community. The Irish race is really a 
 leaven. It is needed to lift the world. 
 It must not segregate itself ; lumped and 
 isolated, it misses its best incentives. 
 But, of course, its prosperity when 
 transplanted is also largely due to bet- 
 [64] 
 
THE SEA-DIVIDED GAEL 
 
 ter civic conditions and escape from op- 
 pressive laws and institutions. 
 
 Macaulay illustrates this in the fol- 
 lowing passage referring to the status 
 of the Irish who migrated to the con- 
 tinent of Europe in the eighteenth cen- 
 tury: 
 
 "There were, indeed," he says, "Irish 
 Roman Catholics of great ability, en- 
 ergy, and ambition; but they were to 
 be found everywhere except in Ireland 
 —at Versailles and St. Ildef onso, in the 
 armies of Frederic and in the armies 
 of Maria Theresa. One exile became 
 a Marshal of France. Another became 
 Prime Minister of Spain. If he had 
 stayed in his native land he would have 
 been regarded as an inferior by all the 
 ignorant and worthless squireens who 
 [65] 
 
WHY GOD LOVES THE IRISH 
 
 had signed the declaration against tran- 
 substantiation. In his palace at Madrid 
 he had the pleasure of being assiduously 
 courted by the ambassadors of King 
 George II., and of bidding defiance in 
 high terms to the ambassadors of 
 George III. Scattered over all Europe 
 were to be found brave Irish generals, 
 dexterous Irish diplomats, Irish counts, 
 Irish barons, Irish Knights of St. Louis 
 and St. Leopold, of the White Eagle 
 and the Golden Fleece, who if they had 
 remained in the house of bondage could 
 not have been ensigns of marching regi- 
 ments or freemen of petty corpora- 
 tions." 
 
 We may, in this connection, recall the 
 story of an Irish schoolmaster, who was 
 examining a class in geography. "Now, 
 [66] 
 
TH E SEA-DIVIDED GAEL 
 
 my lad," he said to a clever little chap, 
 "tell us what latitude is." The clever 
 little chap smiled and winked. "Lati- 
 tude?" he said. "Oh, sir, there's none 
 o' that in Ireland; sure the English 
 won't allow us any, sir." 
 
 Their national vicissitudes have been 
 parturitions out of which the interna- 
 tional importance of the Irish race has 
 developed. It is probable that in 1900 
 there were nearly as many Irish-born 
 persons, and twice as many of Irish par- 
 entage, living outside of Ireland as with- 
 in the native isle of the race. 
 
 So the whole world and all nineteenth 
 century history are dotted with distin- 
 guished names of this expatriate people. 
 O'Higgins commands the Chilean army, 
 Plunkett is governor of New Zealand, 
 Duffy is an Australian premier, O'Do- 
 [67] 
 
WHY GOD LOVES THE IRISH 
 
 herty is archbishop of Manila, Hen- 
 nessy is governor of Hong Kong, 
 O'Donnell is premier of Spain, Taafe 
 is premier of Austria, MacMahon is 
 president of the French Republic, 
 O'Connor is British ambassador to Tur- 
 key, Lord Russell of Killowen is chief 
 justice of England, Fitzpatrick is chief 
 justice of Canada, Walsh is governor 
 of Massachusetts, Glynn is governor of 
 New York, Sheridan is commander-in- 
 chief of the American army, and Irish 
 grandsires have furnished five presi- 
 dents of the United States. 
 
 An American bishop has written a 
 book on the "Religious Mission of the 
 Irish Race." The Irish have done more 
 to spread the Catholic Church in the last 
 hundred years than all its missionary 
 forces in three hundred years. They 
 [68] 
 
THE SEA-DIVIDED GAEL 
 
 have built a thousand churches in the 
 great South Sea continent of Australia. 
 They have thrown a million of their 
 race into England to begin its recon- 
 quest to the faith. They have made 
 the Catholic Church numerically by far 
 the largest and most influential Chris- 
 tian denomination in the United States. 
 While there are to-day twenty-five 
 Catholic bishops in Ireland, there are 
 more than a hundred Catholic bishops 
 with Irish names in other parts of the 
 world. 
 
 St. Patrick's Day is, in our time, the 
 most widely celebrated of national an- 
 niversaries. The salvo with which it 
 opens in Dublin is caught up in Paris 
 by descendants of the Irish Brigade, 
 echoed by students of the Irish College 
 in Rome and by bands of Irish soldiers 
 [69] 
 
WHY GOD LOVES THE IRISH 
 
 in Cairo; Bombay is a-wearing of the 
 green, Melbourne is in gala attire, San 
 Francisco is in mass meeting assembled, 
 and a hundred other cities bear along 
 the chorus to New York and Boston. 
 
 One may adapt Webster's famous 
 passage to the progress of this Irish 
 feast day — it follows the sun, and keeps 
 company with the hours, until the whole 
 world is circled around with the min- 
 strel strains of Ireland. 
 
 [70] 
 
WIT AND GRIT 
 
WIT AND GRIT 
 
 rpHAT the Irish, with their tradi- 
 "■■ tions of learning, are an intellec- 
 tual people, that they are unswerving in 
 their faith and undying in their national 
 spirit, are matters sufficiently recalled 
 in the foregoing paragraphs. It ap- 
 pears, too, that they are enlisted as 
 avant-couriers and leaders in the great 
 democratic movement of our age and 
 that their history touches some of the 
 interesting problems of modern prog- 
 ress. Furthermore, the destiny of these 
 people has brought them to wield an in- 
 ternational influence. These are among 
 [73] 
 
WHY GOD LOVES THE IRISH 
 
 the larger counts in the case which may 
 be pressed in the forum of the world's 
 opinion in behalf of the Irish. 
 
 There are other merits that will be 
 conceded without argument. Irish 
 bravery, Irish music and Irish wit, for 
 instance, are universally celebrated. 
 We need not, therefore, pause long 
 upon these attributes. 
 
 It will be sufficient, as to the first, to 
 quote what the correspondent of the 
 London "Times," who was an eye-wit- 
 ness, wrote of the charge of Meagher's 
 Irish Brigade at the Battle of Fred- 
 ericksburg : 
 
 "Never at Fontenoy, at Albuera, or 
 at Waterloo was more undaunted cour- 
 age displayed by the sons of Erin than 
 during those six frantic dashes which 
 [74] 
 
WIT AND GRIT 
 
 they directed against the almost impreg- 
 nable position of their foe. . . . That 
 any mortal man could have carried the 
 position, defended as it was, it seems 
 idle to believe. But the bodies which 
 lie in dense masses within forty yards 
 of the muzzles of Colonel .Walton's guns 
 are the best evidences what manner of 
 men they were who pressed on to death 
 with the dauntlessness of a race which 
 has gained glory on a thousand bat- 
 tle-fields and never more richly de- 
 served it than at the foot of Marye's 
 Heights, December 13, 1862." 
 
 The flags of some nations bear the 
 figure of a cross or a crown, a sword, a 
 scepter or a star. The Irish is the only 
 flag that enthrones a musical instru- 
 ment. Dante is quoted (by Galilei) as 
 [75] 
 
WHY GOD LOVES THE IRISH 
 
 saying that Ireland gave Italy the 
 harp: and the harp, of course, is the 
 mother of the pianoforte. Mason, a 
 musical authority, asserts that "it is a 
 matter of certitude that Ireland gave 
 Germany her first lessons in musical 
 art" Italy and Germany., the leaders 
 in modern music, may have sat at the 
 feet of the old Irish bards. It is not 
 unfitting: the Brehons and the bards, 
 the lawgivers and the ballad-makers, 
 were the virtual rulers of ancient Ire- 
 land. 
 
 Just as many of the marble palaces 
 of Renaissance Rome were builded out 
 of stone taken from the ruins of the 
 Coliseum, so many of the ballads of the 
 modern world were gathered from the 
 rich and generous store of Irish folk 
 songs. "Robin Adair" has been traced 
 [76] 
 
 
WIT AND GRIT 
 
 to the older Irish "Aileen Aroon" of 
 the fifteenth century. Burns' inimit- 
 able words are often set to Irish bardic 
 airs. Our "Yankee Doodle" adopts the 
 tune of "All the Way to Galway" and 
 ever and anon popular songs of the day 
 get their lilt from the Irish, as in the 
 case of "Sweet Marie" and "Baby 
 Mine," which sing again with little al- 
 teration the ballad of the Shan van 
 Voght. No wonder Stephen Foster, 
 our most famous song writer, who im- 
 mortalized himself in "My Old Ken- 
 tucky Home," "Nelly Bly," "Massa's 
 in the Cold, Cold Ground," etc., was of 
 Irish parentage. 
 
 A whole literature of music has 
 
 grown up around Moore's "Last Hose 
 
 of Summer." Mendelssohn put it in 
 
 his "Fantasia," Flotow introduces it in 
 
 [77] 
 
WHY GOD LOVES THE IRISH 
 
 his "Mart a," and even Beethoven has a 
 setting of it. How often Patti won an 
 ovation with this her favorite ballad! 
 
 All the armies of the world have 
 swung forward to the rhythm of "Gar- 
 ryowen" — "the finest marching tune in 
 the world," according to Col. Roosevelt. 
 
 We are apt to forget that "Maritana" 
 and other popular operas are by Irish 
 composers, although Balfe, the author 
 of "The Bohemian Girl," and Sullivan, 
 of comic opera fame, are better identi- 
 fied. Signor Foli, the sweet singer, 
 needed only slightly to Italianize his 
 Irish name, but Victor Herbert, Amer- 
 ica's favorite writer of light operas, like 
 Saint-Gaudens, the sculptor, is not read- 
 ily supposed to be of Irish birth. Amer- 
 ican audiences have enjoyed no better 
 voices than those of Plunket Green and 
 [78] 
 
WIT AND GRIT 
 
 John McCormack, no finer organ rendi- 
 tions than those of Dudley Buck and 
 Brendan Rogers; and Patrick Sarsfield 
 Gilmore's magnificent band is the mem- 
 ory of a generation. 
 
 It seems to be agreed that the old 
 Gaels were a serious-minded race ; even 
 their minstrelsy was plaintive. That the 
 modern Irish are a witty people would 
 seem to bear out the theory of Burton's 
 "Anatomy" that melancholy is the 
 mother of wit. The Irish have learned 
 to be cheerful through tribulation. 
 Their optimism is born of their sorrows. 
 Otherwise their wit would be "dour" 
 like that of the Scotch. It is best ex- 
 hibited in the satire of Swift, the comedy 
 of Sheridan, the repartee of Curran, the 
 epigram of George Bernard Shaw, and 
 the drollery of "Mr. Dooley." 
 [79] 
 
WHY GOD LOVES THE IRISH 
 
 The pat answer which has been de- 
 fined as "an Irish come-back" is more 
 typical of Irish wit than the bull. Bulls, 
 which are common to the humor of all 
 lands, usually indicate slow comprehen- 
 sion or lax thinking. But the Irish bull 
 is often an instance of thought over- 
 leaping itself, a flash of perspicacity. 
 
 An Irish M.P. once set the English 
 press laughing by his picture of the des- 
 olation of a certain district in misgov- 
 erned Ireland. He said there was "no 
 living creature on it except the sea gulls 
 that flew over it." The picture of a 
 deserted farm was in his mind, and the 
 sea gulls flying landward from an ap- 
 proaching storm heightened the sense 
 of desolation. He was really an im- 
 pressionist, too far in advance of his 
 audience in over-vaulting thought. 
 [80] 
 
WIT AND GRIT 
 
 When a shrewd doctor says that 
 "warm stockings are the best chest pro- 
 tectors," we recognize a forcible and pic- 
 turesque statement; when Napoleon de- 
 clared that "most people dig their 
 graves with their teeth," we see a 
 pointed truth. But when a Kerry doc- 
 tor remarks dryly that "people are 
 dying this winter that never died be- 
 fore," we see a merry Irish "bull." The 
 statement, properly interpreted, is that 
 people who withstood all former trying 
 spells of cold weather are succumbing 
 to this spell, begor! The Kerry man 
 has stated the matter with piquancy. A 
 witty Dublin lawyer remarks: "Eng- 
 lishmen also make bulls; but the Irish 
 bull is always pregnant." 
 
 Blarney is one of the best native prod- 
 ucts of the Emerald Isle, and there is 
 [81] 
 
WHY GOD LOVES THE IRISH 
 
 no tariff on it. Irish immigration has 
 brought it over duty free, to add to the 
 gayety of the nation. Recently on a 
 crowded street car in Chicago, an Irish- 
 man gave up his seat to a lady. She 
 was Irish, too, and did not neglect to 
 thank him. "Thank you kindly," said 
 she. "You're a jewel." "No, indeed," 
 said he, " 'tis a jeweler I am — I set jew- 
 els." 
 
 Blarney is the art of implying a com- 
 pliment with such delicacy and wit that 
 the lady will not feel embarrassed. A 
 gallant Irish colonel sat next to a charm- 
 ing suffragette at a dinner party. She 
 overwhelmed him with her conversation, 
 but at last checking herself, she said: 
 "I have talked so much, you must think 
 I am in love with the sound of my own 
 voice." "Well, now, ma'am," said the 
 [82] 
 
WIT AND GRIT 
 
 gallant colonel, "I knew you liked mu- 
 sic." 
 
 Students of sociology find a test of 
 the degree of civilization in the esteem 
 and respect shown woman. That is an 
 ideal state where innocence may dwell 
 unscathed and purity go about without 
 guardianship. An incident related in 
 Warner's "History of Ireland" is thus 
 rendered in one of Moore's Melodies : 
 
 Rich and rare were the gems she wore, 
 And a bright gold ring on her wand she 
 
 bore ; 
 But oh ! her beauty was far beyond 
 Her sparkling gems or snow-white wand. 
 
 "Lady ! dost thou not fear to stray 
 So lone and lovely through this bleak way? 
 Are Erin's sons so good or so cold 
 As not to be tempted by woman or gold?" 
 [83] 
 
WHY GOD LOVES THE IRISH 
 
 "Sir Knight ! I feel not the least alarm, 
 No son of Erin will offer me harm — 
 For though they love women and golden 
 
 store, 
 Sir Knight! they love honor and virtue 
 
 A chivalrous respect for women is a 
 generally admitted virtue of the Irish- 
 man everywhere. "The Irish peasant is 
 a natural gentleman," said the late 
 George W. Steevens (a Londoner who 
 came to Ireland as the correspondent of 
 a Tory newspaper). But why not, in 
 a paradise of fair women, argues Mr. 
 Steevens (in "Things Seen") : 
 
 "The only thing more beautiful than 
 the Irish land is the Irish women; even 
 when they are old . . . the grace and 
 the wonderful eyes and the courteous, 
 modest, liquid speech compel the hom- 
 age you would not pay to diamonds." 
 [84] " 
 
WIT AND GRIT 
 
 Where women are thus fair and men 
 chivalrous, we have a nation richly 
 blessed in faithful wives and true hus- 
 bands, good sons and loving daughters. 
 It is doubtful whether anything more 
 tender and endearing has ever been 
 written to the memory of a father, than 
 the following poem by Katherine Ty- 
 nan, which forms a prelude to her 
 "Twenty-five Years' Reminiscences." 
 Here the Irish daughter's heart-love 
 goes forth to her comrade father, her 
 remembrance of him fixed in the setting 
 of the grey hills and green valleys of the 
 Irish home-land. 
 
 You were a part of the green country, 
 Of the grey hills and the quiet places. 
 They are not the same, the fields and the 
 mountains, 
 Without the lost and beloved faces, 
 And you were a part of the sweet country. 
 [85] 
 
WHY GOD LOVES THE IRISH 
 
 There's a road that winds by the foot of 
 
 the mountains 
 Where I run in my dreams and you come 
 
 to meet me, 
 With your blue eyes and your cheeks' old 
 
 roses, 
 The old fond smile that was quick to greet 
 
 me. 
 They are not the same, the fields and the 
 
 mountains. 
 
 There is something lost, there is something 
 lonely, 
 The birds are singing, the streams are 
 calling, 
 The sun's the same and the wind in the 
 meadows, 
 But o'er your grave are the shadows 
 falling, 
 The soul is missing, and all is lonely. 
 
 It is what they said: you were part of the 
 country, 
 You were never afraid of the wind and 
 weather, 
 
 [86] 
 
WIT AND GRIT 
 
 I can hear in dreams the feet of your pony, 
 
 You and your pony coming together. 
 You will drive no more through the pleasant 
 country. 
 
 You were a part of the fields and mountains, 
 
 Everyone knew you, everyone loved you, 
 
 All the world was your friend and neighbour, 
 
 The women smiled and the men approved 
 
 you. 
 
 They are not the same, the fields and the 
 
 mountains. 
 
 I sigh no more for the pleasant places, 
 The longer I've lost you the more I miss 
 you. 
 
 My heart seeks you in dreams and shadows, 
 In dreams I find you, in dreams I kiss you, 
 
 And wake, alas ! to the lonely places. 
 
 Robert Louis Stevenson once said: 
 
 "If Ireland were a volcanic island and 
 
 should sink in the sea some night, the 
 
 world would be bereft of more than half 
 
 [87] 
 
WHY GOD LOVES THE IRISH 
 
 its poetic and imaginative people." The 
 Irish have "as fair and bounteous a har- 
 vest of myth and romance as ever 
 flourished among any race/' and of this 
 Shakespeare in his "Midsummer 
 Night's Dream" and Spenser in his 
 "Faerie Queene" bear testimony. 
 
 Oscar Wilde said of his countrymen: 
 "We are the greatest talkers since 
 the Greeks." Such expressions as 
 "He's a very conversable person," "You 
 wouldn't be tired listening to him," are 
 caught up from the mouths of the peas- 
 ants. Michael Miskell refuses a proffer 
 of tobacco and says: "All I am crav- 
 ing for is the talk." Lady Gregory de- 
 clares she was often proud, when at 
 Westminster, to see the House fill up 
 when an Irish M.P. rose to talk. 
 [88] 
 
WIT AND GRIT 
 
 But has the race the every-day vir- 
 tues, the staying qualities that win the 
 victories of peace? In this connection 
 some one has characterized the Celtic 
 state of mind as a "vehement reaction 
 against the despotism of fact." But 
 this is not necessarily futility or incon- 
 sequence ; often it is the temper that gets 
 the world out of ruts. Such was the 
 state of mind of Napoleon when he said, 
 "There shall be no Alps"; and of Co- 
 lumbus, when he ordered his crew to 
 "Sail on! Sail on!" though 
 
 Before him not the ghost of shores — 
 Before him only shoreless seas. 
 
 In our generation we speak much 
 about efficiency. When America, in 
 1898, declared war against Spain, a red- 
 headed Irish- American named Rowan 
 [89] 
 
WHY GOD LOVES THE IRISH 
 
 was asked to deliver a letter to Garcia, 
 the rebel Cuban leader, then roving 
 somewhere in the interior of the island. 
 In four days Rowan landed in Cuba, 
 got through the Spanish lines, plunged 
 into the jungle to find the elusive rebel 
 leader, and in three weeks came out at 
 the other end of the island, having suc- 
 cessfully "carried the message to Gar- 
 cia." He did not ask where he should 
 find Garcia, or how he should get to 
 him, or what was in the letter. He just 
 went and did the business. Rowan was 
 of the type of efficient men that all big 
 enterprises are looking for — men who 
 "deliver the goods." 
 
 Flannagan, a merchandise broker in 
 
 a western city, who retired some years 
 
 ago with a comfortable fortune, likes to 
 
 recall that his books would show deal- 
 
 [90] 
 
WIT AND GRIT 
 
 ings with a wide variety of customers, 
 including the Cohens and the MacPher- 
 sons. And he has some satisfaction in 
 citing his own case as a pretty fair test 
 of trading efficiency : An Irishman who 
 could buy merchandise from a Jew and 
 sell it to a Scotchman at a profit. 
 
 "Pat's pick built our railroads; his 
 brain now directs what his brawn pro- 
 duced." James J. Hill, son of an Irish- 
 Canadian farmer, came to the United 
 States to develop a great railway sys- 
 tem in the West, and Thomas Shaugh- 
 nessy (now Lord Shaughnessy), an 
 Irish-American, dropped a petty polit- 
 ical position in an American city to be- 
 come a financial and industrial magnate 
 in Canada. How many such instances 
 in American industrial history! The 
 United States Steel Corporation, em- 
 [91] 
 
WHY GOD LOVES THE IRISH 
 
 ploying 270,000 men and capitalized at 
 a billion, is the largest industrial organ- 
 ization in the world, and at its head as 
 president and general manager is an 
 Irish-American, James Farrell, who 
 started in the mills as a laborer. 
 
 These men were not mere millionaires 
 or adepts in high finance ; they were pio- 
 neers of enterprise, captains of industry 
 and builders of empire, — men whose 
 character and ability win respect quite 
 apart from their money, their success, 
 or their position. 
 
 [92] 
 
IRISH IDEALISM 
 
VI 
 
 IRISH IDEALISM 
 
 f I THE Irish, of course, have the de- 
 *• fects of their qualities, — and other 
 defects besides. All of which, however, 
 lie close to the surface. These faults 
 we are not celebrating in this presenta- 
 tion. We are guided by the policy of 
 the French, who in their art galleries, 
 in the great halls devoted to battle 
 scenes, show us Marengo and Jena and 
 Austerlitz, but no pictures of Waterloo. 
 French defeats are not commemorated 
 by the French. 
 
 In a treatise on "Prejudice," one of 
 the governing laws of that unjust atti- 
 [95] 
 
WHY GOD LOVES THE IRISH 
 
 tude of mind might be outlined as hav- 
 ing special reference to minorities and 
 so-called smaller peoples. 
 
 Pursuant to this law, there is, in dis- 
 paragement, a constant disposition to 
 reason from the particular to the gen- 
 eral, to establish a universal conclusion 
 out of a few more or less isolated preju- 
 dicial facts. Prejudice, being by nature 
 cowardly, will not so conclude as to a 
 nationality strong and dominant for the 
 moment — like, say, the British or the 
 German; but it will be very ready to 
 deal its summary injustice to the Irish, 
 the Bohemians, or the Jews. 
 
 So minorities, suffering from such dis- 
 paragement, need for their own protec- 
 tion to welcome praises and eulogiums, 
 to celebrate their victories, and to sing 
 their patriotic anthems. 
 [96] 
 
IRISH IDEALISM 
 
 "Nations, like individuals, derive sup- 
 port and strength from the feeling that 
 they belong to an illustrious raee, that 
 they are the heirs of their greatness 
 and ought to be the perpetuators of 
 
 their glory." 
 
 Even some Irishmen have, uncon- 
 sciously, imbibed the Saxon contempt 
 for Irish ways and Irish points of view. 
 Austin O'Malley has this circumstance 
 in mind when he wittily remarks : "God 
 is good to the Irish, but no one else is; 
 not even the Irish" ("Keystones of 
 Thought," p. 188). The finer values in 
 Irish character and Celtic intellect have 
 been misprized. Racial pride must re- 
 assert its inheritance. 
 
 Americans ought to know something 
 of English capacity for disparagement. 
 English critics and travellers, from Syd- 
 [97] 
 
WHY GOD LOVES THE IRISH 
 
 ney Smith to Mrs. Trollope and Charles 
 Dickens, with singular unanimity, at 
 least down to the end of our Civil War, 
 have found fault with our institutions 
 and our manners, our tendencies and our 
 twang, our politics and our personal ap- 
 pearance, leaving us hardly a merit to 
 stand upon. 
 
 The English talent for disparagement 
 fairly exceeds itself when it undertakes 
 the task of explaining British misrule 
 of Ireland by blaming it all upon the 
 character and disposition and what-not- 
 else of the Irish. As for instance : "The 
 Irishman," says the English historian 
 Froude, "is a chronic rebel." Upon 
 which Horace Greeley remarks, "A 
 rebel is a man with sense enough to 
 know when he is oppressed." That has 
 been common sense in Ireland. 
 [98] 
 
IRISH IDEALISM 
 
 When Ireland was a nation her ideals 
 of expansion were intellectual and 
 moral, not military or commercial. She 
 did not bring Christianity to France and 
 Germany by conquest, nor civilization 
 by the mailed fist. 
 
 We have wronged no race, we have robbed 
 
 no land. 
 We have never oppressed the weak. 
 And this, in the face of Heaven, is the nobler 
 
 thing to speak, 
 
 says John Boyle O'Reilly. 
 
 The Irish invasion of Europe was an 
 invasion of teachers and missionaries. 
 They stood for the things of the soul 
 and their distinction was spiritual-mind- 
 edness. This devotion to idealism goes 
 everywhere with their wanderings in the 
 modern world. The Irish element is 
 [99] 
 
WHY GOD LOVES THE IRISH 
 
 not only an evangelizer, but it is every- 
 where in the forward line for civil lib- 
 erty and social and economic equality. 
 
 Back in the thirteenth century, one of 
 the great scholars of that age was 
 crowned as "the Subtle Doctor." Duns 
 Scotus, whose Celticism is undoubted, 
 here exhibited a characteristic of the ra- 
 cial intellect. Sometimes touched with 
 emotion, it is more apt to be inspired by 
 imagination and mysticism, — the crav- 
 ing for the deeper insight and the vision 
 beyond the mist. The Irish mind, nev- 
 ertheless, delights in reasoning and crit- 
 icism ; it is quick, sharp, and active, keen 
 in analysis and rapid and ready in com- 
 bining and correlating. 
 
 The dominant note in Celtic litera- 
 ture, according to Matthew Arnold, is 
 sentiment. The Irish temperament is 
 [100] 
 
IRISH IDEALISM 
 
 poetic. It looks for abiding good. It 
 craves the love that does not alteration 
 find. It seeks the eternal verities — as 
 in the old Irish song rendered to us by 
 Gerald Griffin: 
 
 Castles are sacked in war, 
 Chieftains are scattered far ; 
 Truth is a fixed star, 
 Kileen Aroon. 
 
 When Moore wrote "Erin, the tear 
 and the smile in thine eyes," he compre- 
 hended the eternal dualism of the Irish 
 temperament. We understand men and 
 we understand races best when we un- 
 derstand their moods. Here is a little 
 poem from the pen of Theodosia Garri- 
 son (in "McClure's Magazine") which 
 is a flashlight into the depths of the 
 
 Irish heart: 
 
 [101] 
 
WHY GOD LOVES THE IRISH 
 
 Katie had the grand eyes, and Delia had a 
 way with her, 
 And Mary had the saint's face, and Mag- 
 gie's waist was neat, 
 But Sheila had the merry heart that traveled 
 all the day with her, 
 That put the laughing on her lips and 
 dancing in her feet. 
 
 I've met with martyrs in my time, and faith, 
 they make the best of it, 
 But 'tis the uncomplaining ones that wear 
 a sorrow long. 
 'Twas Sheila had the better way, and that's 
 to make a jest of it, 
 To call her trouble out to dance and step 
 it with a song. 
 
 Eh! but Sheila had the laugh the like of 
 drink to weary ones 
 ( I've never heard the beat of it, for all I've 
 wandered wide), 
 And out of all the girls I know — the tender 
 ones, the dreary ones — 
 [102] 
 
IRISH IDEALISM 
 
 'Twas only Sheila of the laugh that broke 
 her heart and died! 
 
 Kate Douglas Wiggin, in a good- 
 humored book of Irish travel, gives us 
 an inn-keeper's leisurely philosophy: 
 
 "At Brodigan's all the clocks are from 
 ten to twenty minutes fast or slow. 
 
 " 'How do you catch trains?' I asked 
 Mr. Brodigan. 
 
 " 'Sure, that's not an every-day mat- 
 ter, and why be foosthering over it? 
 But we do four times out five, ma'am.' 
 
 " 'How do you like it the fifth time, 
 when you miss it?' 
 
 " 'Sure, it's no more throuble to miss 
 it the wan time than to hurry five times. 
 A clock is an overrated piece of furni- 
 ture, to my mind, Mrs. Beresford, 
 ma'am.' " 
 
 [103] 
 
WHY GOD LOVES THE IRISH 
 
 There is a moderating counsel in this 
 point of view for all of us in this age 
 and clime of hurry. We have all sorts 
 of time-saving devices — telephones and 
 telegraphs, automobiles which "eat up 
 distances" and get us there in a flash. 
 But, nevertheless, with all the time we 
 save, we have no time to spare ; we never 
 are at leisure. 
 
 If we would abate our eagerness for 
 the latest extra and find time to talk 
 with the octogenarians in our midst, we 
 might enrich rather than addle our 
 minds, and enlarge rather than narrow 
 our outlooks. 
 
 Shane Leslie, speaking of "the ould 
 knowledge," once common among the 
 Irish people, — meaning such knowledge 
 as stopping the flow of blood by some 
 charm, or finding an herb to cure a fever, 
 [104] 
 
IRISH IDEALISM 
 
 or divining signs or portents — says that 
 only those born before the famine year 
 (1847) have any remnants of this "ould 
 knowledge." It has passed and is pass- 
 ing. 
 
 Now this may be only one instance 
 of the loss of old traditions and touches, 
 some of them really valuable: the 
 charming manners of the ancient re- 
 gime, the leisure of the stage coach days, 
 the ability to wonder and admire, the 
 spirit of fealty, "the unbought grace 
 of life." 
 
 There is a pragmatic and utilitarian 
 view of things ; and there is also a poetic 
 and mystic view. It is for us to learn 
 which is the truer and wiser interpreta- 
 tion. 
 
 One man goes through the crowded 
 streets and sees only the carriages of 
 [105] 
 
WHY GOD LOVES THE IRISH 
 
 the rich and the grandeur of the show 
 windows ; another sees only the faces of 
 the passers-by and the joy or the trag- 
 edy revealed in their eyes ; one is moved 
 by the spirit of greed, the other by the 
 emotion of charity. How much more 
 an angel would see than a mere grubber, 
 and how much higher the angelic in- 
 terpretation! 
 
 Many elements enter into the vision 
 we get of things ; there is association and 
 memory, there are moods, experiences, 
 and temperaments. There is also un- 
 doubtedly the influence of hereditary 
 traits. 
 
 Those who inherit something of the 
 Celtic way of looking upon life may 
 be less practical; but they clothe their 
 perceptions with pleasing glamours or 
 with witching and eerie backgrounds 
 [106] 
 
IRISH IDEALISM 
 
 that give a peculiar zest and flavor, and 
 perhaps a fuller meaning, to many- 
 things. We need, in this very practical 
 age, to appreciate rather than to dis- 
 parage this unworldly Irish way of look- 
 ing at things. We need to cherish this 
 gift of the Celt as something which truly 
 enriches life. 
 
 What sort of people have been bred 
 out of such traits, such trials, such 
 ideals, and such a history ; and how shall 
 we forecast their future? The literary 
 daughter of a distinguished Irish- 
 American soldier of our Civil War 
 (Colonel Guiney) gives us this answer 
 in a paragraph, written with a fine in- 
 tuition : 
 
 "Time, which was expected to bring 
 about no Ireland, has in reality engen- 
 [107] 
 
WHY GOD LOVES THE IRISH 
 
 dered a national life more intense than 
 ever. The physical strength, the pa- 
 tience and passion of the common 
 people; the grace, loyalty, and play of 
 thought of gentlemen, have in that na- 
 tional life come together. Unique pa- 
 trician wit, delicacy of feeling, knightly 
 courtesy have run out of their allotted 
 conduits and they color the speech of 
 beggars. Distinction of all sorts 
 sprouts in the unlikeliest places. Vio- 
 lent Erin produces ever and anon the 
 gentlest philosophers; recluse Erin 
 sends forth the consummate cosmopol- 
 itan, hunted and jealous Erin holds up 
 on its top stalk the open lily of liberal- 
 ity— 
 
 "Courteous, facile, sweet, 
 Hating the solemn vice of greatness — 
 pride!" 
 
 [108] 
 
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