FROM THE ARCHIVES:Ten days after Éamon de Valera first led Fianna Fáil into government promising to remove the oath of allegiance to the British king and to stop paying land annuities to Britain, The Irish Times published this editorial. –
‘I RELAND HER own and all therein, from the sod to the sky’: this sentence, as he has told America, embraces the aims of Mr. de Valera’s Government. Is the ideal of an absolutely self- contained Ireland attainable or unattainable? In a sense, as we think, it is attainable, and, indeed, has been attained.
To-day the Irish Free State enjoys political independence of the fullest kind. She elects her own governors and makes her own laws; she has a personal voice in the council of the nations at Geneva [the League of Nations]; the use or abuse of all her wealth and qualities, from the sod to the sky, is in the hands of her own people.
Moreover, extraneous powers and opportunities of the most precious character have been conferred on her by her partnership in the British Empire. If that free partnership irks Mr. de Valera so much that he is prepared to denounce its blessings, we can say only that idealism run mad is a national calamity. In another sense, Mr. de Valera’s ideal is not attainable.
The Free State, part of a small island on the edge of a great continent, cannot escape the influence of external contacts. Her mind and her habits must be affected by the practices of the world around her – but its newspapers, its good or bad manners, its economic activities and its standards of right and wrong. Books and trade are two out of a million factors which tend to produce a common norm of civilisation. How can we have a self-contained Ireland – by which Mr. de Valera means a Gaelic Ireland – so long as Irish thought and feeling are tinctured from noon till night of every day with the garish dyes of Hollywood?
Nevertheless, our sympathies lie largely with Mr. de Valera’s moral and social idealism. We believe that his ideal can be achieved in part, and ought to be achieved. Ireland has gifts and qualities which distinguish her from the rest of mankind. We agree that in these days of cosmopolitanism they ought to be conserved for her own benefit and for mankind’s advantage.
In an age of unfaith Ireland remains a religious country; she has a high code of manners; her patriotism, is still of that spiritual sort which is capable of great deeds and great sacrifices.
When Mr. de Valera invokes us to keep our best qualities unspotted from the world and to yoke our spirit of sacrifice to tasks of social and economic progress, we admire and applaud him. To admire and applaud is not to suppose that he will succeed. Too many influences are working in Ireland to-day against the spirit of industry and sacrifice, and one of them is the national orgy of gambling.
Yesterday several persons in Ireland became suddenly rich [through the Irish Hospital Sweepstakes]. How can such a universal vision of swift and unearned riches be consistent with the spirit of industry and sacrifice?