The United States was in the depths of depression when Franklin D. Roosevelt declared, in his inaugural speech, that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself".
It was a belief famously repeated almost 30 years later by John F. Kennedy, in the context of a different but no less ominous challenge. Now, in another time and place, it might well apply to those who are worried about the arrival of asylum-seekers in cities, towns and villages around the State.
But, in our case and in these days, fear is complicated by an absence of leadership and the ineptitude of the Department of Justice.
Of course, there are bound to be problems when strangers are set down in what must seem isolated places without work or the opportunity to earn a living.
Their isolation is increased by inadequate transport, difficult access to services and a mere £15 a week to cover expenses other than food and shelter.
But refugees (whatever they are called and for whatever reason they come) have never fared well in this State.
The first group that I can remember were the Hungarians who arrived here soon after the rising in Budapest in 1956. To us, they were victims of a communist regime and, therefore, heroic.
Though Ireland may have been neutral, its citizens generally were not; and at Shannon Airport great crowds turned out to give them a rousing Cold War welcome.
They were housed in east Clare in an old Army camp at Knockalisheen. It was a bleak place surrounded by a barbed-wire fence; for a time, people came to stand outside to stare at the Nissen huts and their silent occupants.
We were shocked when they began to complain about the poor heating, the quality of the food, the absence of work and the restrictions on their movements.
Limerick was a less welcoming place then; and when a few of them got drunk and ended up in court they were told they had abused the hospitality the city had shown them.
Within months they went on hungerstrike, partly in protest against their conditions and partly because they felt that, if work wasn't available in Ireland, they should be allowed to go to Canada where they would have no difficulty finding jobs.
When they had gone, they were remembered with an air of puzzlement. There was a feeling that, as refugees, they ought to have been grateful for what they'd been given. They had no right to ask for better conditions or to want jobs in Canada.
Not to put too fine a point on it, we thought of the Hungarians who came to Ireland as having fewer rights than we had and little or no ability to decide their future.
When the Dail debated the events at Knockalisheen, most of those who spoke hinted at the ingratitude of the refugees and only one, Jack McQuillan, suggested that it was our attitude to them which was at fault.
Ireland was a poor country in the 1950s. We had not gained from the post-war boom which had enhanced the economies of western Europe; indeed, we were suffering the most serious drop in population since the Famine.
Now that our circumstances have changed, have our attitudes to less fortunate people changed, too? Have we developed a deeper understanding of the needs of those who must quit their homes and homelands?
Or do we still think of them as we did in the 1950s, though we are immeasurably better off than we were then and we have a capacity to be generous and imaginative which we could scarcely have dreamed of 45 years ago?
THE President, Mrs McAleese, favours the generous and imaginative way. So did her predecessor, Mary Robinson. And Mrs Robinson's predecessor, Paddy Hillery, speaks pointedly of the wealth that we have accumulated but failed to distribute.
The Catholic bishops have this week called for a compassionate and welcoming attitude to asylum-seekers and refugees and suggested that those already here be accepted and allowed to work.
Reports have come from different parts of the country which tell of a priest here, a woman there, taking a stand against suspicion and fear.
In Corofin, a village on the edge of the Burren, a man called Declan Kelleher agrees to take the chair at a potentially difficult meeting on condition that "not one prejudicial remark passed by anybody".
And he asks his audience: "Is there one person in this hall that did not . . . have an ancestor in the last century who was an economic refugee? It is very, very important that that is remembered."
But there are doubts and fears which give rise to demands, like that raised at Clogheen, Co Tipperary, that arrivals should be screened for AIDS or should have their records checked.
At Clogheen, the Vee Valley Hotel, where asylum-seekers are to be accommodated, was set on fire; and in Ballsbridge, Dublin, residents have asked the High Court to quash a Government decision to use a guesthouse as a reception centre.
Fears are fanned by reports like that published across eight columns in the Irish Independent on March 18th under the heading "Refugee racket fears as 43 arrivals demand asylum".
It began: "Fears were mounting last night that an organised immigration racket was targeting Ireland after 43 people of mixed nationality walked off a boat yesterday and sought political asylum."
Reading the accounts of local meetings and listening to the debates admirably chaired by Rodney Rice this week, it would appear that - with a few lurid exceptions - the most common complaints are about the absence of information.
But, then, the Department of Justice is one of the most forbidding and secretive institutions in the State; a Department in which openness is not so much welcomed as suffered by those at its head and in all probability by many who work in it.
The most serious complaint is of a complete absence of leadership by John O'Donoghue and his colleagues in Government.
There is no sense that this is a human issue, reflecting one of the great human issues of our time. "It's a question of implementing the law of the land," O'Donoghue said flatly.
Is it any wonder that almost 60 per cent of those questioned in the latest Irish Times/MRBI poll should have said the Government was handling the issue not particularly well or not well at all?