AT LARGE

Evening Star, Issue 19800, 25 February 1928, Page 2

AT LARGE

AROUND ABOUT DUBLIN My farewell to Ulster was made under weeping skies. The elements seemed in harmony with my feelings. It continued to rain most of the way from Belfast to Dublin. I felt sorry for the poor farmers, whose crops were being relentlessly ruined. Apparently the weather got worse after we left. In a letter I had my correspondent writes that the rain was a mist compared with what they were now experiencing. Farmers are In despair. “One wonders vaguely what’s the use of saving bits of bread and bacon skins, and suchlike things, when Nature sweeps away tens of thousands of tons of grain, homes, and live stock, and then turns round and smiles at you as she is doing this morning oil all the desolation. I suppose there is no answer. A little prosperity in this poor old country of ours would help, in my opinion, more than any amount of such disheartening trials, but if one took the responsibility of making the weather one would have to take evefything else. So I suppose we had best let it alone.” Quite likely. Curiously enough my last visit to Dublin seven and twenty years ago was made under somewhat similar weather conditions. But then I merely drove from ono station to another on ray way to Queenstown. No city looks well on a wet day, and Dublin was no exception. This time my stay was longer—some four days altogether. I was thus enabled to see a little more of the Free Stato capital, and I will record some of my experiences and impressions. * * * My earlier memories of Dublin were of a somewhat mixed character. It was here the students of the three colleges of Belfast, Galway, and Cork used to assemble for their degree examinations. These colleges formed what was then known as the Queen’s University. It hail a name, but not a local habitat. The examining board consisted of certain professors chosen in rotation from each of the colleges. Examinations arc not exhilarating experiences, though the students of to-day seem to treat them with levity and failure to pass as of little consequence. It was not so in my time. Failure was regarded as a disgrace, and a fellow was inclined to hang his head in shame. But we have changed all that, and the modern student takes his “ploughing” with complete equanimity. My earlier recollections of Dublin were thus associated with some of the most anxious and trying experiences of my life. It was good to see again the city of so many doubts and fears under happier conditions. My visit was shortly after the assassination of Kevin O’Higgins. But everything seemed quite normal; business as usual appeared to be the order of the day, of course. The minds of the people were now, in politics, turned to the byelections, one of them to lill the vacancy of tho murdered man. By the time this reaches you that will be ancient history. So will tiie story of the general election and the return of Mr Cosgrave to power, but by no moans with the majority he expected—and deserved. For he is certainly a figure of somewhat heroic proportions, standing steadfast in tho breach through which a new nation, amid blood and terror, is slowly struggling into liie. From one point of view Do Valera’s unexpected successes at the polls is very disquieting. But it has to Iks remembered that the Irish arc always rebellious, but not revolutionary. Tho story of one of them when he arrived in New York asking if there was a Government in the country, and when told there was saying “Well, I'm agin it,” is characteristic. And that contradictory spirit is at the back of a good deal of the Republican agitation. But, after all, it is a political commonplace that it is a good thing there should be a vigorous and an alert Opposition. It will probably be more easy for Mr Cosgrave, and perhaps better for the country, that ho should have to battle his way against a vigilant opposition than placate an embarrassing number of friends. The one thing that the Free State needs at the present time is a sane, strong man, and it has got that in Mr Cosgrave. He is a man of broad vision, of high character, and indomitable courage. Do Valera is a vain opportunist. He swallowed the oath for no other purpose than to win political revenge against Cosgrave and his Government. It might perhaps have been a good thing had De Valera succeeded in seizing the reins of power, for then his egregious vanity would have overleaped itself. Responsibility soon unmasks the insincere. He could, and did, make all kinds of promises as to what would happen if he were head of a Republican Government. As one of the most celebrated of the Irish race—Edmund Burke—once wrote: “ Hypocrisy delights in the most sublime speculations, for, never expecting to have them realised, it costs nothing to have them magnificent.” If Do Valera bail got into power it would then have been seen how hollow wore his promises, how impossible of fulfilment. His claptrap about a “ foreign King ” is easily seen by (i nyo,uo who understands the Constitutional question. At the Imperial Conference last year tho Stales of the British Commonwealth were declared to bo “ equal in status, in no way subordinate one to another in any aspect of their domestic or external affairs, united by a common allegiance to the Crown, and freely associated as members of tho British Commonwealth of Nations.” This makes the Saorstat judicially equal to Great Britain within and without the Commonwealth of Nations. Tho oath of allegiance to the King is practically an oath of allegiance to the Irish people as represented by their Government. But I am drifting into the troubled waters of political seas, where I have neither the wish nor skill to adventure. • " * * * One of the first things that strikes the visitor to Dublin now is the extraordinary number of policemen and soldiers to be seen on the streets. 1 should think every third person ono meets is in military dress. Their extraordinary youthfulness is also remarkable This was apparent also in the members ot the police force in Belfast. Many of them are returned soldiers. Ono rarely meets a senior looking constable. as in the English or Scotch cities. They are very neat and smart, but not impressive representatives of law and order. What was said by a driver of a van to one of the older sort would not apply to them. The driver, for some reason or other, had not heeded the warning of the policeman who had been regulating the traffic. ” Didn’t you see me hold up my hand? ” said the irate guardian of the law. “ Well, yes,” calmly replied the

delinquent, “ I thought. 1 did observe it getting dark a bit; I was so busy keeping the paid baste from, shying at your feet that I had no time to attend to anything else." As for the military side of the guardians of peace, their upkeep must be a serious drain on the finances of the Government. I saw it stated that it was costing the country from twenty-five to thirty-five millions, varying by the will of Mary M'Swecncy arid her Republican friends. The game of the Republicans is said to be to try to keep up the expense till they have bankrupted the Government. Ariel, as a writer -in. the ‘English Magazine* recently put it, “the church stands behind in the dark ready to loose the furies of two-worlds in case the Government attempted educational reform or any other measure that might improve on fifteenth century ideals. It keeps prelates in Ireland to flatter the Government, and a much more powerful one in Melbourne to frighten it; so that between flattery, fright, and Miss M'Sweeney the business of building national stability is not bright.” ■

Yet, given the firm hand of Cosgrave at the helm foi a while, there is no need for pessimism. On the contrary, tho future looks bright. Shortly before his murder O’Higgins claimed: “We have endeavored to give value for the money levied in taxation; to give it in security of person and property, in tho smoothness of our judicial processes, in tic efficiency and stability of our institutions, in the keenness and energy with which the various departments of State are prepared to enter into the lives of tho people, and to deal by legislation with the problems which present themselves.” And this claim is largely justified by existing facts. Agriculture, which is the basic nerve of tho country, is being set firmly upon its feet, and when the Shannon scheme is completed the country will have abundance of cheap energy that must have far-reaching effects. The most disquieting feature in tho picture is the character of tho people themselves. There is a curious divorce between morality and religion. The churches are crowded, yet tho ordinary commonplaces of morality—truth, honesty, etc.—are sadly at a discount. The people cannot be trusted to provide a reliable magistracy. Resort must be had to an exclusively paid stipendiary. For tho same reason the authorities have been forced to abolish a great deal of local government. Even judicial reform is heading in the direction of doing away with the jury system, which might be a gain when frauds and perjury are so common. Tho church issued recently a warning against the latter, and almost every judge and magistrate finds tho prevalence of perjury to be defeating the ends of justice, I read a case in a paper of a witness who said about a certain statement that ho did not tell the truth because he was not on his oath! When that is the custom it will be difficult to hold society together, for its only cement is truth between man and man. -It may be hoped.that, with the spread of education, things will improve. But sentimental reasons have clogged its efficiency by tacking on to it the Gaelic language. This is trying to put back the wheels of progress. It is foolish to suppose, as many do, that the teaching of it in the schools will prevent Ireland from being assimilated to England and America. The bulk of the teachers don’t lesiro it. The pupils and parents, as a rule, dislike it; and Protestants object tovthe compulsion, looking on it as a sort of trick to exclude them from the Public Service. * * ♦ * I went one evening to tho Abbey Theatre, made famous a little while ago by the intellectual revival, under the leadership of men like Synge, Yeats, Stephens, etc. I had hoped to see one of the plays of a nephew of mine, who combines the profession of playwright with the more lucrative one of a Government provincial land inspector. Tho Abbey Theatre is subsidised and censored by Government as an outlet for the dramatic genius of Ireland, and it has been fairly successful in this. The night I was there the plays produced were ‘ The Drhpier Letters ’ and one of Bernard Shaw’s, ‘ Arms and the Man.’ The former took mo back to my college days, as it was one of the books prescribed in the literature course for the degree examination. In those days tho authorship was unknown, but the playwright definitely ascribed it to Dean Swift. The Irish scenery was interesting, and Shaw’s play was, . of course, clever and witty. Indeed, tho same may be said of the other as well. The theatre was crowded, and the audience evidently enjoyed both, and had a happy time of it. The audience consisted mostly, I should judge, of young men and young women employed in shops and factories. Both plays were simple and clean, and tho effect upon the hearers happy and -wholesome. Tho sudden sunburst of artists of some twenty or thirty years ago appears to have faded out, for the most part. A few still remain, like Yeats, “no longer writing, but fallen silent from the stars to weep for Lir’s lost children on the strange and lonely isle in the western sea.”