"Why do you not go home?" asked an Irishman of James Joyce when they met in Switzerland in 1940. Replied Joyce "I am attached to it daily and nightly like an umbilical cord", and the family joined in to say that indeed he kept Radio Eireann going on the wireless all the time.
Nowadays there are so many ways for Irish people abroad to keep in touch. Telephone systems are fast and sure TV and radio carry Irish news to the ends of the earth, and there is, of course, now the net. And air travel has made the world so much smaller. Since the founding of the State, there have been attempts, official and otherwise, to help Irish people overseas keep in touch. And then there is Ireland of the Welcomes, 95 per cent of whose subscribers are from outside. It is not a hard sell tourist propaganda organ, nor a rosy missionary vehicle, but a fine, splendidly presented invitation to look at the positive side of things.
It may have had several predecessors. One has just come to hand. Vol 1 No 1 of a solid magazine called Inisfail, with the unusual characteristic that it was financed by an unknown benefactor, and that all the contributors gave their services free. The year was 1933, when Ireland had not yet entered the business era. And it was stated firmly that "it is not desired to make any profit from INISFAIL and none will, in fact, be made. Messrs Craig Gardner, Chartered Accountants of Dublin, have consented to act as honorary auditors and to testify hereafter that this was so.
We were innocent, odd, idealistic in those days. Impractical, some will say. What, no millionaires? And the list of contributors is impressive Sean O Faolain, T. C. Murray, Francis Stuart, L. A. G. Strong, Paul Henry, Peadar O'Donnell, Richard Rowley, Stephen Gwynn, Cearbhall Ua Dalaigh (later to be President), Con O'Leary, Sir John Lavery, Brian Ua Nuallain (later to be Myles na Gopaleen), Desmond Ryan, Shan Bullock and others. Stuart's contribution is a story with a twist, Sean O Failain's is on The Humanity of AE. Also much news of sport, travel, our representation abroad, and all in something over a hundred pages. With many advertisements. Was there ever a second issue?
But back to Joyce and Radio Eireann, as it then was. At one Question Time programme, a competitor when asked who had won such and such a literary prize, said "I think it was Joyce". The author, in his Paris flat says he stood up and bowed to the receiver.