the baffling injustice that is the common fact in Ireland their madness cannot be marvelled at. Men too long baulked in their legitimate dispositions have been guilty of greater madness. To see how Irish dispositions are being baulked and to suggest how those greater madnesses can be avoided are the problems Irish statesmanship must confront.

This attitude is not discernible in the self-interested Englishmen I have quoted, from Milton on. And yet all except the most unidealistic administrators know better today than to obsess themselves with racial or patriotic prejudice. "I am entirely convinced," said a German ethnologist some years ago," that our late war in South West Africa might easily have been avoided, and that it was simply a result of the disparagement which ruled in the leading circles regarding the teachings of ethnology. Taught by bitter experience, we shall now be compelled to study the native in our colonies, simply because he is the most important product of the soil, which never can be supplanted by any substitute, and. must therefore be regarded as absolutely indispensable."

This is a nasty philosophy, but it is better than the blind brutality of Milton's. It would have been well for Milton if he had known and appreciated the other mournful German administrator who said, "Far too little regard was paid to native customs and traditions of life. Instead of studying native law and custom systematically, and regulating administration in each colony according to its peculiar traditions and circumstances, all colonies alike were governed on a sort of lex Germanica, consisting of Prussian legal maxims pedantically interpreted in a

narrow bureaucratic spirit by jurists with little experience of law, with less of human nature, and with none at all of native usages."

The evils of this German Machiavellism are not on the surface, but between competent and incompetent Machiavellism the better is the competent. The alternative to such manifestations of self-seeking is an abandonment of imperialism altogether. The spiritual aspects of furious contempt and cold managerial efficiency are both repellent. If greedy colonization has to be undertaken in one or other of these moods, then, as President Wilson has told the world repeatedly, it is imperative that human beings go uncolonized.

CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT

THE CONTRAST WITH SCOTLAND

SEEING that England is Protestant and Ireland Catholic, it is quite easy to identify Catholic interests with Irish interests and Protestant interests with English interests. This is one of the simplest ways to misunderstand Ireland. Influential above everything else in the destiny of Ireland, the power of Rome has been not infrequently exercised in conjunction with the power of England, contrary to the desires and aspirations of radical Irishmen. The popular allegiance to Catholicism has undoubtedly helped to keep Ireland national. The policy of Catholicism has undoubtedly helped to keep it national unsuccessfully. This intricate contest between the three influences the papal, the English, the national, deserves much more consideration than it usually receives. It is too simple to speak of Ireland as "priest-ridden." It is too simple (though so convenient that we all do it) to speak of Catholic Ireland as synonymous with nationalist Ireland. England 'has made much of Ireland's Catholicism in intimating the difficulty of ruling Ireland. But often "Catholicism" has been a synonym for vassalage. The common people in Ireland have never ceased to be the sport of economic forces masquerading as religious, and religious

forces intruding into the political. The complexity of this tournament demands an excursion into history where one does so often detect the thumb prints of visitants who leave no trace of themselves elsewhere outside their contumelious deeds.

People often wonder, for example, why the Scotch-English conflict and the Irish-English conflict should have worked out to such different conclusions. There was nothing different in the antagonisms. In both cases there was a conflict of will. In both cases there was a recourse to force. But in Scotland's case the people were already trustified, so to speak, on the national issue, while the Irish had not, as yet, assumed mastery of their fate. The clue is religious.

It was Scotland's fortune to have had a greedy and lecherous priesthood. Delegates of the divine Emperor, they pursued not only his interest but their own. They were, in the crudest sense, men of this world. For a long time the Scotch submitted to the church in perfect faith, but gradually the church took on the character of a foreign body, and the effort to expel that foreign body precipitated national consciousness. The people made a choice between obedience to their hierarchy and obedience to what they considered their own material and spiritual good. The choice became practically unanimous. It gave the people unity of interest, and led them to organize their will in gaining control of the church. In this coordination they attained their political majority.

When the English made onslaught on the Scotch they discovered a people who had found themselves. They could not be divided to be conquered. The

result was a self-respecting compromise. It was a long while before the Scotch really trusted the English. Being considerably weaker, they were considerably suspicious. But England had the tact to conciliate Scotland. It had been beaten often enough by Scotland to respect its power, and although, as Charles Lamb so amusingly illustrates, there was a great deal of racial prejudice and mutual contempt, the union was respected on both sides, and the result was a genuine United Kingdom.

The Irish contingency came earlier. It was Ireland's fortune to possess a priesthood which also was greedy if not lecherous. The divine Emperor ruled Ireland through delegates of great political power. Religion coordinated the Irish, as it coordinated the Scotch, but it coordinated them on an ultramontane basis. The centre of their being was outside Ireland - politically, in Rome. When, therefore, the clergy and nobles of Ireland held their third national council and sought to repress simony and usury, to enforce the payment of tithes, and to "put down robbery and rape and bad morals and evils of every kind," the Irish were unable, like the Scotch, to discount the charges. They accepted the Imperial indictment, which gave Henry II his excuse to come to Ireland to reform and build up the Catholic Faith, which had fallen down in Ireland."

You have, then, the contrast between a people undertaking its reformation from within, involving the rejection of external authority; and a people whose reformation was undertaken from without, involving the affirmation of external authority.

The result, at first, was politically unimportant.