in a sense so gigantic that it would have staggered the statesman who once used the phrase, we have called in the new world to redress the balance of the old. the new world has found new worlds to conquer; it has new tasks not only drastic but delicate, not only political but psychological. among the things which america may yet help us to achieve is one about which i feel strongly and even painfully—the reconciliation, a thousand times thwarted but now a thousand times more necessary, between the english and the irish. the triangular table of such a peace conference need not, and perhaps had better not, be found in any public building. rather it should be found in every public house and even in every private house. the change should come through something which is far nobler and more eternal than diplomacy or politics; talk. it should come through the only real public opinion, which is always uttered in private; the public opinion that is a mass of private opinions. a famous irishman said of the irish that they were too poetical to be poets, but that they were the greatest talkers since the greeks. my personal memory does not stretch back to the greatest period of greece; and perhaps the best talker i ever knew was an irishman, who is now living in america and (i will confidently affirm) talking in america. it may be true that he is too poetical to be a poet; anyhow, he is not too poetical to be the father of a poet. he is mr. j. b. yeats, the father of mr. w. b. yeats; and he has lately been persuaded to write and print some of the good things he has said all his life—first in the form of a book of letters, and later of a book of essays, essays irish and american, published by mr. fisher unwin. but my real satisfaction, in the social and political sense, is to know not that he has written a little, but that he has spoken much; for out of such seemingly lost and wasted words come the real international understandings.
there was a type of detachment during the late war, not to be confused with what i can only call the view of the vulgar peacemonger. it was not the patronizing pacifism of the gentleman who took a holiday in the alps and said he was “above the struggle”; as if there were any alp from which the soul can look down on calvary. there is, indeed, one mountain among them that might be very appropriate to so detached an observer—the mountain named after pilate, the man who washed his hands. the isolation i mean is far removed from such impudence. the defence of this detachment is that it is not really detached; it was not indifference, but indignation. it was not without foundation; it was only without proportion. indeed, the real case against it was that while its expression was largely cynical, its motive was largely sentimental. such was the irritation of mr. bernard shaw; such was the irritation of many irishmen much more national than mr. bernard shaw. their irritation can be analysed in a simple phrase; it annoyed them that the men who were wrong should be right. it annoyed them that all the snobs and sneaks of our corrupt parliamentarianism should free the world by accident. in the quarrel with prussia, they could not really doubt—they did not really doubt—that england was right. but they did doubt whether england had any right to be right.
it is a view i think self-stultifying and even suicidal. for the great work will be remembered and the meaner workers forgotten; and it is madness to praise the persians on the eve of marathon because one has quarrelled with some silly archon at athens, whose very name will be lost in a few years. but it is not a treasonable, far less a treacherous view; and its anger is the same as the popular anger it arouses. this is the irish mood which common sense and common sympathy must deal with; and this is the peculiar value of real irish intellectual detachment like that of mr. yeats. first of all, a man like mr. yeats is so genuinely detached that he can be definite and clear in his sympathy with the allies. he would be capable of the supreme impartiality of seeing that england could be right although she had been wrong; and even that ireland could be wrong although she had been wronged. but all the time he would play with a perennial fount of satire and insight on the fundamental spiritual facts that falsify the english position in ireland. he would make us feel that we were only right in one thing because we were so wrong in many things. there are many examples of this in his little book of essays; but the one i would emphasize here especially is his very vital point about the domestic nature of the whole sociology of ireland. here again he is all the more impressive for being in a sense impartial, or even what some would call indifferent. he is not what is called orthodox; he might well be called sceptical. he has cultivated rather continental ?sthetics than catholic apologetics. it is solely by a serene insight into what his french teachers would call the vraie verité that he sees the way the world ought to go; and pauses upon the phrase, “the return to the home.”
irish education, he declares, must always depend on the fact that the child’s mind is full of “the drama of the home.” it marks his judicial emancipation that he contrasts this domestic drama favourably with two other types of teaching, one of which would be called conventional and conservative, while the other would be called unconventional and advanced. he criticizes the old english public-school boy; he also criticizes (i grieve to state) the new american woman. the two things called in england the “public school” and the “high school” are counted almost contraries, merely because one is old and the other new. but the critic sees them to be essentially the same; because in both cases the school overshadows the home. here is a profound practical instance of the root realities of the irish national claim. here is a case in which home rule literally means the rule of the home. it will never be possible to establish the english fashion in ireland, and i for one should not pretend to be sorry if it were possible to spread the irish fashion to england.
for the drama of the home is really very dramatic. it is one of those facts that are confused and hidden by the modern fuss about social machinery, which is the mere scene-shifting and stage-carpentering of the domestic drama. the household is the lighted stage, on which the actors appeal literally to the gods. it is in private life that things happen. a human being is born at home; he generally dies at home, and the social philosophy that can deal with nothing but his coffin carried out of the house is merely a philosophy of boxes and parcels, a philosophy of luggage and labels. half our human effort is now wasted on mere transit, transport, and exchange; the commonwealth is a clearing-house of cases we never open and presents we never enjoy. rulers and reformers are a race of rather pedantic porters, always carrying an unknown present to an unknown person, not unfrequently (i fancy) the wrong present to the wrong person. some of our strenuous social organizers may be content to spend christmas at charing cross station for the pride of controlling the traffic and the luggage. but i confess i find it more exciting to be at the end of the journey where the christmas gifts can be seen.
