What's the Matter with Ireland?

I congratulate you on the rapidity with which you succeeded in understanding Irish conditions and grasped the Irish viewpoint.

I hope your book will be widely read. Your first chapter will be instructive to those who have been deceived by the recent cry of Irish prosperity. Cries of this sort are echoed without thought as to their truth, and gain credence as they pass from mouth to mouth. I hope we shall have many more impartial investigators, such as you, who will take the trouble to see things for themselves first hand, and who will not be imposed upon by half-truths.

Having visited Ireland, I feel you cannot doubt that the poet was right--

"There never was a nation yet Could rule another well."

I imagine, too, that having seen the character of British rule there, you must realize better than before what it was your American patriots of '76 hastened to rid themselves of. In a country with such natural resources as Ireland, can you believe it possible that if government by the people obtained there could be such conditions of unemployment and misery as you found?

Do you not think that if the elected Government of the Republic were left unhampered by foreign usurpation, we might in the coming years hope to rival the boast of Lord Clare in 1798:

"There is not a nation on the face of the habitable globe which has advanced in cultivation, in manufactures, with the same rapidity in the same period as Ireland--from 1782 to 1798."

and that progress like this, with the present social outlook in Ireland, would mean the peace, contentment and happiness of millions of human beings?

Yours very truly,

(Signed) EÁMON DE VALÉRA.

FOREWORD

"And tell us what is the matter with Ireland."

This was the last injunction a fellow journalist, propagandized into testy impatience with Ireland, gave me before I sailed for that bit of Europe which lies closest to America.

It became perfectly obvious that Ireland was poor; poor to ignorance, poor to starvation, poor to insanity and death. And that the cause of her poverty is her exploitation by the world capitalist next door to her.

In Ireland there is no disagreement as to the cause of her poverty. There is very little difference as to the best remedy--three-fourths of Ireland have expressed their belief that the country can live only as a republic. Even the two great forces in Ireland that are said to be for the status quo, I found in active sympathy with the republican cause. In the Catholic Church the young priests are eager workers for Sinn Fein, and in Ulster the laborers are backing their leaders in a plea for self-determination. But there are, of course, those who say that a republic is not enough. In the cities where poverty is blackest, there are those who state that the new republic must be a workers' republic. In the villages and country places where the co-operative movement is growing strong, there are those who believe that the new republic must be a co-operative commonwealth.

I

WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH IRELAND?

OUT OF A JOB

Is Ireland poor? I decided to base my answer to that question on personal investigation. I dressed myself as a working girl--it is to the working class that seven-eighths of the Irish people belong--and in a week in the slums of Dublin I found that lack of employment is continually driving the people to migration, low-wage slavery, or acceptance of charity.