THE IRISH RIDDLE.

Auckland Star, Volume XLIX, Issue 41, 16 February 1918, Page 17

THE IRISH RIDDLE.

BAKREX BEAUTX OF THE WEST. Blr. Alex. M- Thompson, a writer with much knowledge of Ireland and the Irish, writes as follows in the "Daily Mail":—

••Would there 'be a sheet of 'water the like of that anywhere on God's beanttful earth ■vritb. never a boat on it except In Ireland?" Mcrasignor McAlpine, vicaTgEneral and parish, priest of Cllfden, in Connemara, tells mc that lie once asked the question of his archbishop -when travelling •with him through, this desolate land of plooniy beanty; and I quote it as expressive of my own constant feeling of puzzled i wonder. What is the matter -with Ireland? I have T> assed to-day through a region of j mountain, moor, lake, and coast unsurpassed in wild grandeur toy—any region I lave seen within these Isles, hut there -was scarcely any sign of such facilities of travel °nd entertainment as one would have found in other lands to attract visitors. This little port of Clifden. according to Canon HisAlpine, had a fleet of a dozen fishing-tooats twenty years ago; now, despite the lavish expenditure of the Congested Districts Board, which -was established primarily to aelp Connemara. there are only four. There is great waterpower running to waste, there are copper mines in the neighbourhood iraexplottpd. and the peasants and fishermen "lave no room to live" in this vast desert of wind-swept space, .but die of tuberculosis in insanitary bevels. The only buildIng in the town that looks alive and prosperous is the workhouse.

Ask the people the cause of the country's decline, and the practically invariable answer Is: "English niisgovcrnnient." Canon UcAlpine, a typical prieet of Irish fiction, with a joke and a laugh in every fold or his jovial, wrinkled face, looked almost angrily when I asked him the question I ask everybody here.

■it isn't a clever man like yon need be asking a simple village priest the like of that, for you will have read all the history t.ooks that a poor priest wouldn't have a cb;!tK"e to see." he said.

The ponr, simple village priest, by' the way. was reading "Lotfl IMortey'e Life" when I intruded on the privacy of his wellstockrd library, and I have something more than a suspicion that the genial old gentleman was pulling my leg. But I answered politely that I had not read any history which precisely explained the general dilapidation and wretchedness of the country. "Sure, then, you've read of the Act of ■TTni'-m." retorted the priest, "and all the villainies the English have done to murder Irish trade. But you've no call to go beyond the present time and the way they be goinz now to stop the trade in Guinness' stout. Mind you, it's myself wouldn't lie grieved if there was never another drop of rhp liquor sent nut. if I didn't well know 'tis all an English trade trick to suppress another Irish industry."

It was in vain that I protested against this charge, pleading the common neeesEities of war In defence of the British Government's 3ction. But your true Irishman enjoys a grievance too much to give it up to mere argument. His country's wrongs are. like the symptoms of a hypochondriac's sickness, a constant stan-d-by and comfort to him. But the puzzling thing to a sympsthPtic inquirer is that every party in the country gives a different statement of the facts and supplies different deductions from them. Thus in Sligo I faithfully reported what had been said to mc by Sinn Felners and Vnionists. and now find myself dejounced hy the local Nationalists as an enemy to Home Rule. Similarly and contrariwise when f repeated in Belfast what 1 had heard in Dublin I was attacked as "a rabid Home Ruler." The honest Englishman's critics are agreed only in one respect, and there their unanimity is wonderful, and that is that no Englishman ever did or ever could know anything at all about it: nay. a writer in the "Irish Independent" even includes Bernard Shaw among the "literary English journalists"— risen, and the present writer —who have lately betrayed their woeful ignorance of the subject. On the other hand, I have heard a Gal way man say: "It couldn't be that ,you Englishmen -Brill ever understand what's the matter with us for. faith, we don't understand it ourselves!" Or, as 3>>rd Dufferin put it: "TVe don't know what we want, and we won't be happy till W-e get it." On one point, however, my paTish priest ■was very clear and definite: He did not want an Irish Republic separated from the British Commonwealth. He repudiated the young bloods of Sinn Fein as emphatically as he denounced the English politicians.