THE WEARING OF THE GREEN.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 2084, 31 January 1920, Page 2

THE WEARING OF THE GREEN.

IX his book ‘‘lrish Impressions,” Mr G. K. Chesterton suggests that lor the future we should all join in singing “The Wearing of the Greens.’’ lie says “(lie whole miraele of modern Ireland might well be summed up in the simple change Jrom the word ‘green’ to (he word ■greens.’ If any one,” says Mr Chesterton, “were to ask me what was the sight that struck me most in Ireland, both as strange and as significant, 1 should know what to reply., I was moving in a hired motor down a road in the northwest towards the middle of that rainy autumn. It was not moving very fast, because the progress was slowed,down to a solemn procession by crowds of families with their cattle, and livoj stock going to the market beyond; which things, also, are an allegory. .But what struck my mind and stuck in it was this: that all down one side of the road, as far as we went, the harvest was gathered in neatly and safely, and all down the other side of the mad it was rotting in.the rain. Xow, the side where it was safe was a siring of small plots worked by peasant proprietors, as petty by our standards as a row of the cheapest villas. The land on which all Ihe harvest was wasted was the land of a large modern estate. I asked why the landlord was later ■in harvesting than the peasants, and 1 was told rather vaguely that th-efe had been strikes and similar labour troubles. 1 did not go into the rights of the matter; but the point here is that, whatever they were, the moral is the same. You may curse the eruel capitalist landlord, or you may rave at. the ruffianly Bolshevik strikers; hut you must admit that between them they had produced a stoppage which the peasant proprietorship a few yards off did not produce. . . The peasant across the road is both a- capita list and a labourer. He is several .other curious tilings, including the man who got his crops in first, who was literally lirst in the held.”