THE ECONOMIC LEGACY BURYING THE PAST NEARLY everything that has been said, so far, belongs to the past, and it seems uncharity to dwell upon it. Among nations that are united today, either by amity or by law, there are many that were once in murderous opposition, sundered by declared war or by revolution. No history could be more bloody than that of England and Scotland, and yet the most loyal Scot thrilling to the name of Wallace or heartened by the thought of Bruce is just as ready to die for Britain as a Percy. England and the United States rise above remote conflict and recent friction. England and France make common cause. It is in the character of nations, as of persons, to end quarrels and compose differences, and let the dead bury the dead. To refuse to do this, to cling to grievance, is not merely morbid and vicious; it violates the social principle and prohibits sanity. It would not be difficult to make a long list of modern Irishmen who, within the British empire, have found it entirely possible to have honorable careers. Leave aside such Protestant Irishmen as have come to the top in the British army and navydescendants of the colonization even if, as in the case of Wellington or Lord Roberts, their families had been in Ireland for hundreds of years. Leave aside such Protestant Irishmen as Bernard Shaw and W. B. Yeats and John Synge and Oscar Wilde and A. E. and that celebrated Episcopalian convert (or is it Anabaptist?) George Moore. There is still a notable list, Irish and papist, of men who found that their heredity was no fatal barrier within the empire. Lord Charles Russell of Killowen, Lord MacDonnell of Swinford, Sir Gavan Duffy, Sir William Butler, are among the first to drift into the mind, men promoted to high office within the governmental scheme itself and not at the cost of disavowing nationality or religion. Why is it, then, that Irish nationalists scorn the suggestion of Sir Horace Plunkett — Irish history is a thing for Englishmen to remember and for Irishmen to forget? Why is it that the past, the musty past, is a living reality for Irishmen, a memory with a sabre tooth? Is it Celtic contrariness, or Celtic mystery, or Celtic twilight? Why do Irishmen insist on the past? Careers await them within the empire. The empire itself awaits them, as it awaited. the Scotchman. Why do they not reach out the fraternal hand? THE ENGLISHMAN SETS HIS JAW The answer is, of course, partly psychological. For all his great gifts, the greatest gift of the Englishman is not putting himself in the alien's place, and at any moment he is likely to revive all the past by some act of stupid and unimaginative selfishness. But a deeper explanation than this must be brought forward. The absence of considerateness is a hard fact of life; it is not only what every Irishman knows but what every Chinook knows, one of the grim proofs of man's "inherent vice." There is a more concrete reason why the past is a living reality in Ireland. It is the effect in practice, sustained and persistent and inflammatory, of English privilege and self-preference in Ireland. If the harmful consequences of the past were not tenderly nursed and protected, there would be no Irish question today. But while the Englishman often makes the most adequate acknowledgments of the sins of his grandfathers, he does so in the persuasion that verbal atonement suffices. The grubbing act of restitution, the tedious amendment of the past in terms of present advantage and present increment, is always slowly undertaken and is frequently beyond his comprehension; so that the more impatient Irishman calls him a hypocrite and wishes him tortured in hell. It is astounding to a good Englishman, ready to admit stupidities and even crimes, that his sense of justice should be called into question. He feels just. He has always paid his way scrupulously, met his obligations promptly, kept his appointment punctually, changed his linen regularly, and added charity as a moral bouquetière. Why, then, should a boisterous Irishman be so ready to point a blunderbuss at his head? The situation is so offensive to the good Englishman that he is quite ready to pigeonhole the code he employs in dealing with equals and to open up the code he is forced to employ in dealing with inferiors; the code that Germans call "blood and iron," that Irishmen call coercion. The manner of the accuser, unfortunately, is rather likely to reach the Englishman's amour propre before it reaches his ques sense of justice; and if self-respect is called into tion before anything else, he declines to argue. He even, unchristianly, sets his jaw. SICK EGOISM But setting one's jaw is a preposterous way to meet the situation, either for Englishman or for Irishman, except in the actual tug of war. The Irishman's mere anger is natural but impotent. The Englishman's self-respect is, beyond doubt, an admirable fixture, but it is no more entitled to interpose itself between the critic and the facts than a lady's modesty to interpose itself between her physician and her ailment. Self-respect is commendable, provided the proportion of self in it is strictly regulated. Otherwise it goes into the irrational class with divine right, manifest destiny, Deutschtum and the rest. It is, that is to say, the disguise of a sick and greedy egoism. It is only a sick egoism that cannot afford to have its motives turned inside out and rationalized. A tenderness for England has led to some amazing promenades of self-respect in the last few years. Mr. Arnold Bennett, for example, went to Dublin Castle in 1917 to learn exactly what Ireland's remonstrance against Dublin Castle was, and he cabled his opinion to the United States that the worst offence of Dublin Castle was its habit of permitting dossiers to be written on both sides of the paper. It was a thin joke to spread over so vast and so discredited a bureaucracy. Since it was denounced by Joseph Chamberlain thirty years ago little has been done to reform Dublin Castle. It is only a few years since President Lowell of Harvard made unequivocal criticism of British administration in Ire land. The effort of so honest an Englishman as Arnold Bennett to play ostrich in this predicament shows the overwhelming difficulty of being dispassionate. Mr. Austen Harrison of the English Review, indeed, refused to behave as Mr. Bennett did. Unlike Bernard Shaw in urging the expedient of a branch-office home rule, he did not try to juggle water on both shoulders. But the candor of Mr. Harrison is in extraordinary contrast to the nimbleness of patriots and propagandists for whom, at the moment, truth was in the second place. TRUTH IN THE FIRST PLACE Until truth is put in the first place and kept there, no Irish policy can be a broad social policy, no AngloIrish goodwill can be a sound goodwill. The tinkers and handymen have been trying for centuries to mend the Irish trouble while glossing just those evils that cause the Irish trouble. This is political idiocy. Until the men and establishments that have a vested interest in the perversion of Irish life, in the malformation and distraction of the Irish community, are identified and deposed by statesmanship, it is utterly useless to talk of making Irish history tolerable, or burying the past. The past is a corpse tied to living Ireland. Neither Mr. Bennett's enamel nor Mr. Shaw's chaste kisses can change its nauseating properties. The bonds of that foul corpse have to be severed before it can be interred and forgotten. How was the union with Scotland kept from festering? How was the entente between France and England matured? Only by a recognition of mutual will, a consideration of mutual advantage. Mr. Arnold Bennett spends four days among the records of |