the royal assent to a bill passed by Parliament, Mr. Chesterton says in metaphor that Home Rule became law in 1914. Figurative language is characteristic of the author's style: every chapter contains a figure; sometimes, indeed, the reader becomes lost in following the mazes of imagination and uncertain of the point at issue, a confusion unfortunate in a book dealing with a political question of the day, where clearness and insight are qualities which not only may but should exist side by side. Nevertheless, the author manages to distil the essence of the Irish problem; it is possible to turn to others for statistics and for the sequence of events; Mr. Chesterton expresses the intangible; he gives the atmosphere of Ireland. In this volume, as always in this author's prose, is to be found a happy use of antithesis, suggesting that the resemblance between Chesterton and Doctor Johnson is more than skin deep. Moreover, this book abounds in humor; and truths, dressed brilliantly, lose nothing. For example, the religious difficulty in Ireland is epitomized in a statement which will be in the mind when pages of disquisition are forgotten: "The Protestant generally says, 'I am a good Protestant,' while the Catholic always says, 'I am a bad Catholic.

44

be

In spite of the fact that Irish Impressions may called somewhat "journalistic," giving evidence in a number of places of having been written hastily, there are also many passages of great beauty. These

sentences from Mr. Chesterton's defence of Ireland as a nation are incisive, and proceed to an admirable climax in the paraphrase from Mr. Yeats's play, Cathleen ni Houlihan.

Now it is this sensation of stemming a stream, of ten thousand things all pouring one way, labels, titles, monuments, metaphors, modes of address, assumptions in controversy, that make an Englishman in Ireland know that he is in a strange land. . . . If he has any senses, he soon finds them unified and simplified to a single impression; as if he were talking to a strange person. He cannot define it because nobody can define a person; and nobody can define a nation. . . . We can only say, with more or less mournful conviction, that if Aunt Jane is not a person, there is no such thing as a person, and I say with equal conviction that if Ireland is not a nation, there is no such thing as a nation. . . . I will claim to know what I mean by an island and what I mean by an individual; and when I think suddenly of my experience in the island in question, the impression is a single one; the voices mingle in a human voice which I should know if I heard it again, calling in the distance; the crowds dwindle into a single figure whom I have seen long ago upon a strange hill-side and she walking like a queen.45

However, most people will read Irish Impressions to find out what Mr. Chesterton thinks rather than merely to be entertained by his style, and the matter may profitably be considered apart from the manner of his writing. Although an Englishman, the author does not hesitate to blame his country as the chief

offender in the matter of Irish discontent, and he feels strongly that the Government broke faith with the Irish by failing to put into operation the Home Rule Bill passed six years ago. He quotes an Irishman in this connection as saying, "And now we will not give you a dead dog until you keep your word." While strongly condemning England, he has no sympathy with those Irishmen who, to spite their ancient aggressor, wished Germany to succeed in the World War; next to his chapter on "The Mistake of England" comes that on "The Mistake of Ireland." He agrees with the majority of recent writers in wishing to see the troublous island made a selfgoverning part of the British Empire. The chapter on "The Family and the Feud" shows the author's understanding that the Celtic idea of the family (which was the foundation of the early Irish tribal state) persists, and has much to do with the divergence between Englishmen and Irishmen in their concepts of government, interfering also with a satisfactory settlement. Mr. Chesterton would be untrue to his championship of the Christian faith did he not emphasize the Irish contribution to the world as other than material. He closes his book with this paragraph:

As the long line of the mountain coast unfolded before me, I had an optical illusion; it may be that many had had it before. As new lengths of coast and lines of heights were unfolded, I had the fancy that the whole

land was not receding but advancing, like something spreading out its arms to the world. A chance shred of sunshine rested, like a riven banner, on the hill which I believe is called in Irish the Mountain of the Golden Spears; and I could have imagined that the spears and the banner were coming on. And in that flash I remembered that the men of this island had gone forth, not the torches of conquerors or destroyers, but as missionaries in the very midnight of the Dark Ages, like a multitude of moving candles, that were the light of the world.46

1921.

IT

AN APOLOGIST FOR SINN FEIN

T is easier to espouse the cause of one of the Irish political parties than, after weighing conflicting statements, to find the right and wrong of the Irish question. Only the impartial historian, who carefully examines facts, and gives clear references to his authorities, can arrive at a just conclusion. Professor Henry, of Queen's University, Belfast, in his An Apologist for Sinn Fein, adopts the easier course; he traces the growth of the Sinn Fein Party in its conflict with Irish Nationalism and with the Dublin Castle Government, always keeping before the reader the Sinn Fein point of view. His book is a plea before a jury (the jury in this case being the reader) rather than an attempt at reasoned argument, for he deals hardly at all with the objections to Sinn Fein, and then only in the chapters where

this is necessary in order to show the divergence between Sinn Fein and the old-time Nationalists.

Throughout the book Professor Henry writes with an admirable detachment; he indulges in none of the impassioned rhetoric and emotion that has marred much Irish political writing. It is not to be wondered at that men of Sinn Fein sympathies already regard this book as a classic. But for all his detachment, Professor Henry is partisan. Though he does not declare himself a Sinn Feiner, he carefully keeps out of his book anything that might seriously damage the Sinn Fein cause, which he sedulously interprets in the best light. He quotes freely from Sinn Fein newspapers and periodicals, but he fails to supply his book with footnotes which would enable the reader to consult the original sources. Such inaccuracy vitiates the publishers' claim on the jacket that the writing "remains. carefully historical throughout."

As an exposition of the Sinn Fein point of view, Professor Henry's book cannot fail to interest Americans who read it without prejudice, particularly those with some knowledge of Irish history. There has been in this country recently an unreasoning intolerance toward the idea of an Irish republic. Nothing is wrong or ignoble in the idea; the objections to it may, and should, be based upon entirely different grounds: they are implicit in Irish history.

Professor Henry has divided his book into ten