To Ellen Countess Dowager of Desart, Aut Even, Kilkenny, Ireland. DEAR LADY DESART, It was through your great kindness in 1913 that I was enabled to begin this book. I had most in mind, at that time, the direct upbuilding of which you and Captain Cuffe had given such models in Kilkenny the woollen mills and the woodworks and tobacco culture. When I came back to the United States, as I wrote you, I was thinking almost altogether of the needless disorganizations of Irish life, and I believed there were corresponding organizations of American life which could be adapted to Ireland. An American might not easily imagine the salient educative facts that would strike an Irishman, but I was convinced that we could apply to ourselves much that had been quietly developing in the ways of equipping and directing and cultivating American citizenship. In spite of Ulster and Sir Edward Carson, national and imperial issues were scarcely in my mind at all, until August, 1914. Since August, 1914, we have seen Ireland grow more and more uneasy in the powerful currents that are sweeping through the world. With the coming of the war I confess I lost hold on my first intentions and have never been able to take them up again. Ireland has remained in my mind, but much less as a country relentlessly determined by the will of Ulster and England, much more as a country with free will and a large opportunity to make that will effective. The national will of Ireland has emerged as a great reality for me, and in this book I am much more occupied with this reality than with the details of reconstruction and reclamation. Ireland is too near a new arrangement of public authority not to make everything else subordinate, especially when its claims are so largely misrepresented and misunderstood. Apart from the love of Ireland which we both share, I believe that our convictions are often dissimilar, and I am sure you will completely disagree with much that I have written. But I write with John Morley's words before me, "The important thing is not that two people should be inspired by the same convictions, but rather that each of them should hold his and her own convictions in a high and worthy spirit. Harmony of aim, not identity of conclusion, is the secret . . I wish I could be as sure of my own "high and worthy spirit" as I am of yours; but even with my failures manifested in these pages, I trust you will read this book in place of "the book" to which you gave your friendship and support. Yours sincerely, New York, June 5, 1918. FRANCIS HACKETT. |