" Let us not be
the Laodiceans of Europe, listless and indifferent to human needs,
swallowing our whisky and our porter, stupefying our souls, while our
poor are sweated; letting the children of our cities die with more
carelessness about life than the people of any other European country,
with sectarian organization's crawling in secrecy like poisonous
serpents through the undergrowth of swamps and forests. The co-
operative movement is at least open and ideal in its aims and objects.
It is national and not sectional. It seeks the triumph of no section
but the unity of our people, where unity alone is possible. Our
intransigents and extremists of all parties are not hurt or wounded by
their adhesion to the co-operative ideal. We may make up our minds that
the stubborn Irish temperament will never be overcome, but it may be
won, and the movement which invites all parties and creeds into its
ranks and gives them the largest opportunities of working together and
understanding each other, gives also the largest hope of the gradual
melting of old bitterness into a common tolerance where what is best
essentially wins; for all true triumphs are triumphs not of force, but
the conquest by a superior beauty of what is less beautiful.
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