WHAT can any ordinary citizen of the Republic do about Northern Ireland this or most weeks, but hope and pray and try to understand?
I went out the other day and bought The Fight for Peace, by Eamonn Mallie and David McKittrick, which is subtitled The Secret Story Behind the Peace Process (Heinemann, £8.99). I'd meant to get it after reading an article in the Big Issue which said the book "should be read on the strength alone of the personal letters between, Major and Reynolds..."
I foolishly thought this meant there would be semi private material in the book which would give me an insight into the two men's real thinking on Northern Ireland. Even the most determinedly indifferent feel the difference between the ceasefire and now, when anything might happen. Yet though the war affects us, we seem unable to affect it. And despite the very best efforts of good journalists, we lack real insight.
We take it for granted that we know nothing about the thinking of the paramilitaries. Nobody seems to have complete access to them his book reminds us, for example, that the truck used in the Canary Wharf bombing was being prepared while President Clinton was in Belfast and we were all full of sentimental optimism.
Among those who did not know that the bombing was being planned were "the British and the Irish governments, the unionists, the nationalists, the Americans and the rest of the world . . . Sir Hugh Annesley, Chief Constable of the RUC, and Gerry Adams, president of Sinn Fein." And us.
But depressing as it is to think that no one we can put a name to knew, it would be even more depressing to think that one or more of them did know.
Negotiations are conducted behind screens and what comes out of them is couched - necessarily - in terms of "constructive ambiguity". I accept this is how things must be, but in a week like this, when a temporary momentum comes up against one of the many blank and seemingly unscalable walls that surround the Anglo Irish problem, the language of diplomacy can seem utterly empty.
You feel the need to appeal to anyone up there who might be listening: "Tell us straight. Is there a plan for what happens next? Is there anything John Major has in mind to do before he goes?"
Because John Major, personally, matters. He is the reason I bought the book: I thought there would be revealing letters from him. There are not, though Albert Reynolds's correspondence seems to have been to hand.
I am an admirer of Major. He seems quite exceptionally calm and able, especially for a politician, more especially for a modern Tory politician. And decent. All the little things we know about his personal life - like the love affair he had with an older woman when he was a young man, the fact that her children liked him and relied on him - bear out this decency.
Kathleen Reynolds is quoted in the book: "I am very fond of him: he's a very honest, genuine man, he's so human. And believe me I don't get bowled over by prime ministers and the like..."
READERS steeped in the false objectivity of political reporting will sneer that how the British Prime Minister behaves to women, for example, has nothing at all to do with Northern Ireland. But there are two things to be said about the role of personality in this or any other great matter of state.
The first is that it patently affects events - you only have to ask whether any other personality than Mary Robinson's would have elicited a standing ovation in the City of London on the very day the IRA threatened it again. Similarly, it was something to do with his personal quality that made John Major take the interest he did not need to take in Anglo Irish matters (I doubt very much that an opportunistic Labour leader will do the same).
He, personally that is, because of some combination of seriousness perhaps, or self confidence, or idealism, or vanity in his person - took home (the book quotes a source), his first Christmas in office "a series of briefings, put a wet towel around his head, and started reading them". The exceptional amount of time and effort he subsequently devoted to Northern Ireland is on record. If it wasn't enough, or wasn't deployed with enough flair, the answer is also, to a degree, to do with personality.
I started the book to find out about Major: Northern Ireland is a province of the United Kingdom, after all, and H.M. government and no other body will take or not take the radical decisions about it, But I, ended it overwhelmed by the energy and originality of Albert Reynolds.
He dominated Major, on the evidence here. He dominated everyone, when it came to Northern Ireland, by doing, without reference to the usual restraints, what he passionately believed could be done. If other aspects of his, personality hadn't handed Labour an opportunity to ditch him, I think he would have led John Major further, than any other Irish player could. It is not in the interest of anyone at present in power to admit it but Albert Reynolds had an ardour on this subject that was as valuable as it was naive.
The second way in which personality matters is that it gives us a way in. We don't know where or when or by whom the decisions to, kill and maim are made or decisions such as raising the issue of arms decommissioning, to move slowly on the release of IRA prisoners, to grant Private Lee Clegg early release.
BUT here on the margins, the only judgments we can confidently make are those about personality and character. Print and broadcasting keep us abreast not only of the facts of events, but also of the kind of people involved in the events. I never saw John Major on television but that he was calm and mild, and I prefer these qualities in the person ultimately responsible for Northern Ireland to a great many others.
Unflappability, however, may not be what the situation ideally demanded. The Mallie/McKittrick book is rich in detail about other types of bearing - John Hume's, for example - that have arguably been more effective in moving things forward.
Readers will bring their own judgment to the question. The book allows them to do that: It allows what they know about people an outing. This week, it can remind us, human beings as well as representatives of this or that politics will be sitting down with other human beings, and will be watched by human beings - you and me, and with mingled pride and chagrin, no doubt, by former Taoiseach Reynolds and soon to be former Prime Minister Major.