Unless this is done Ireland will be like Portugal, or any
of the corrupt little penny-dreadful nationalities which so continually
disturb the peace of the world with internal revolutions and external
brawlings, and we shall only have achieved the mechanism of nationality,
but the spirit will have eluded us.
What I have written hereafter on the national being, my thoughts on an
Irish polity, are not to be taken as an attempt to deal with more than a
few essentials. I offer it to my countrymen, to start thought and
discussion upon the principles which should prevail in an Irish
civilization. If to readers in other countries the thought appears
primitive or elementary, I would like them to remember that we are at
the beginning of our activity as a nation, and we have yet to settle
fundamentals. Races hoary with political wisdom may look with disdain
on the attempts at political thinking by a new self-governing
nationality, or the theories of civilization discussed about the cradle
of an infant State. To childhood may be forgiven the elemental
character of its thought and its idealistic imaginations.
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