No people seem to have greater natural intelligence than the Irish. No people have been so unfortunately cursed with organizations which led them to abnegate personal thought, and Ireland is an intellectual desert where people read nothing and think nothing; where not fifty in a hundred thousand could discern the quality of thought in the Politics of Aristotle or the Republic of Plato as being in any way deeper than a leading article in one of their daily papers. And we, whose external life is so mean, whose ignorance of literature is so great, are yet flattered by the suggestion that we have treasures of spiritual and intellectual life which should not be debased by external influences, and so it comes about that good literature is a thing unpurchasable except in some half-dozen of the larger towns. Any system which would suppress the aristocratic, fearless, independent intellect should be regarded as contrary to the Irish genius and inimical to the national being.
XVI
Among the many ways men have sought to create a national consciousness, a fountain of pride to the individual citizen, is to build a strong body for the great soul, and it would be an error to overlook—among other modern uprisings of ancient Irish character—the revival of the military spirit and its possible development in relation to the national being. National solidarity may be brought about by pressure from without, or by the fusion of the diverse elements in a nation by a heat engendered from within. But to Create national solidarity by war is to attain but a temporary and unreal unity, a gain like theirs who climb into the Kingdom not by the straight gate, but over the wall like a robber. When one nation is threatened by another, great national sacrifices will be made, and the latent solidarity of its humanity be kindled. But when the war is over, when the circumstances uniting the people for a time are past, that spirit rapidly dies, and people begin their old antagonisms because the social order, in its normal working, does not constantly promote a consciousness of identity of interest.
Almost all the great European states have fortified their national being by militarism. Everything almost in their development has been subordinated to the necessities of national defense, and hence it is only in times of war there is any real manifestation of national spirit. It is only then that the citizens of the Iron Age feel a transitory brotherhood. It is a paradoxical phenomenon, possible only in the Iron Age, that the highest instances of national sacrifice are evoked by warfare—the most barbarous of human enterprises. To make normal that spirit of unity which is now only manifested in abnormal moments in history should be our aim; and as it is the Iron Age, and material forces are more powerful than spiritual, we must consider how these fierce energies can be put in relation with the national being with least debasement of that being. If the body of the national soul is too martial in character, it will by reflex action communicate its character to the spirit, and make it harsh and domineering, and unite against it in hatred all other nations. We have seen that in Europe but yesterday. The predominance in the body of militarist practice will finally drive out from the soul those unfathomable spiritual elements which are the body’s last source power in conflict, and it will in the end defeat its own object, which is power. When nations at war call up their reserves of humanity to the last man capable of bearing arms, their leaders begin also to summon up those bodiless moods and national sentiments which are the souls of races, and their last and most profound sources of inspiration and deathless courage. The war then becomes a conflict of civilizations and of spiritual ideals, the aspirations and memories which constitute the fundamental basis of those civilizations. Without the inspiration of great memories or of great hopes, men are incapable of great sacrifices. They are rationalists, and the preservation of the life they know grows to be a desire greater than the immortality of the spiritual life of their race. A famous Japanese general once said it was the power to hold out for the last desperate quarter of an hour which won victories, and it is there spiritual stamina reinforces physical power. It is a mood akin to the ecstasy of the martyr through his burning. Though in these mad moments neither spiritual nor material is consciously differentiated, the spiritual is there in a fiery fusion with all other forces. If it is absent, the body unsupported may take to its heels or will yield. It has played its only card, and has not eternity to fling upon
