Responsibility

An tAthair Peadar is not one of the pessimists. He believes that we are winning. Like Eoin Mac Neill, he stands almost amazed as he looks back on the road which the language movement has so laboriously trod during the past fifteen years and sees how long a stretch we have covered and how many stupendous obstacles we have overcome. "We all thought," he writes in the Leader, "the progress was extremely slow, and we all had the feeling in us all along that there was more of failure than of success in our most strenuous efforts. And yet, looking around now, after the fifteen years, what do we see? We see, already generated and in full vigour, a force for the production of which a whole century would not have been by any means too long. We felt that we were always failing, and, behold, we have been succeeding in a most remark,ible way during the whole time! Of course, God has been helping us. Moladh agus buidhchas le Dia."

Yet An tAthair Peadar recognises that the movement stands at a critical stage. We cannot afford to retrogress one inch. We must press on and on. There rests on the whole nation a mighty responsibility in this matter,— a responsibility to see not merely that the work is carried on, but that it is carried on with the maximum of efficiency and with the minimum of waste or dissipation of energy. An tAthair Peadar shows that the weight of this responsibiltiy rests, in the first place, on the highest intellect of the nation; in the second place, on the largest wealth of the nation; and, in the third place, on the conscience of the whole nation, high and low, rich and poor.

His remarks under the first head are full of value. There are people who object to the League because of occasional bickerings within its ranks, because of an alleged streak of anti-clericalism, because of this or that. The remedy, as An tAthair Peadar points out, is in the hands of these people themselves. Let them come into the League and help to colour its tone and shape its policy.

A similar counsel would apply to the Protestants who think the League too Catholic, and to the Unionists who think it too Nationalist. An tAthair Peadar writes, dealing with those who fear the " bickering" and the " anti-clericalism " If there be any truth in what you say that only doubles, nay, trebles, the responsibility which rests upon those who represent the intelligence of the nation. The intelligence of the nation is bound to do the guiding of the nation. If the intelligence of the nation retuses to do the guiding, then the intelligence of the nation is guilty of an act of abdication.

If those who ought to be guides will abdicate, those who ought not to be the guides will take up the work of guidance. On the other hand, if the intelligence of the nation will press into the work, instead of backing out of the work, its very presence will have a steadying effect. It is the want of the steadying effect, the want of the ballast which intellect is sure to bring with it, that causes the jolting and the bickering. Intellect should not stand at its ease on the shore watching the boat as it jolts and tosses. Intellect should get into the boat and steady it, and take up the heaviest part of the work, instead of standing on the shore criticising.

"' But it is manifest that there is anti-clericalism in tre movement! '" There is one effectual remedy for that evil, if there be any truth in its existence. Let clericalism crowd in and occupy all the vacant space. By 'clericalism ' I mean not only priests and bishops, but all those who have intelligence and education and who are earnestly opposed to the thing called 'anti-clericalism.' What is to be thought of a person who fears his enemy and who makes up his mind to defeat his enemy by keeping away?

"My firm belief is that those whisperings about `anti-clericalism' in the work of the language movement are neither more nor less than 'chughat an puca.' It is a convenient thing for people who do not wish to exert themselves to try and point a finger at some shadow which they are pldased to call 'anti-clericalism,' and to whisper 'chughat an puca.' I must admit, though, that people of that description, if they were numerous, which they are not, would be apt to generate an anti-something-or-other of a very disastrous nature by the exasperation which their shirking of duty would cause."