constructive thought we can show on the ideals of a rural civilization.
But economic peace ought surely to have its victories to show as well
as political war. I would a thousand times rather dwell on what men
and women working together may do than on what may result from
majorities at Westminster. The beauty of great civilizations has
been built up far more by the people working together than by any
corporate action of the State. In these socialistic days we grow
pessimistic about our own efforts and optimistic about the working
of the legislature. I think we do right to expect great things
from the State, but we ought to expect still greater things from
ourselves. We ought to know full well that, if the State did twice
as much as it does, we shall never rise out of mediocrity among
the nations unless we have unlimited faith in the power of our
personal efforts to raise and transform Ireland, and unless we
translate the faith into works. The State can give a man an
economic holding, but only the man himself can make it into Earthly
Paradise, and it is a dull business, unworthy of a being made in
the image of God, to grind away at work without some noble end to
be served, some glowing ideal to be attained.

Ireland is a horribly melancholy and cynical country. Our literary
men and poets, who ought to give us courage, have taken to writing
about the Irish as people who "went forth to battle, but always fell,"
sentimentalizing over incompetence instead of invigorating us and
liberating us and directing our energies. We have developed a new
and clever school of Irish dramatists who say they are holding up
the mirror to Irish peasant nature, but they reflect nothing but
decadence. They delight in the broken lights of insanity, the
ruffian who beats his wife, the weakling who is unfortunate in
love and who goes and drinks himself to death, while the little