Vigilance Committees on the Wrong Track

We have no unbounded faith in the methods of many of those who, of late, are loud in their denunciations of English newspapers, but who do nothing to give the people a taste for better things. Our colleges follow rigidly the literary programmes from which Mangan and Kickham and McGee and every Irish writer of English who maintained an independent mental attitude are excluded. The biggest and most influential of the colleges teach their boys cricket and rugby, games that have an extensive popular literature for which the boys soon develop a liking.

We exclude Irish from over 5,000 primary schools and from scores of colleges. We accepted a foreign system of education, we drove the children into the schools, we tortured with the cane and the tally those who spoke Irish into speaking English, we shut off from them the wit and wisdom of their own tongue, and now when the seed we planted with such thoroughness has bloomed into a tree that bears rotten fruit, we hold up our hands in pious horror and cry "Foul England."

The inane people who feed on the most worthless literature in Europe, the English newspaper and cheap magazine literature, are much more numerous than the readers of Sunday papers. Thousands of people who never see a Sunday paper patronise the cheap magazines, which have no claim to exact knowledge, to taste in literature or to a true outlook on life. The difference between those who read the cheap books and periodicals and those who purchase only the more highly flavoured literary pie of Sunday morning is only one of degree. Both belong to the same class.

They are the fruit of eighty years of foreign education, of the failure of our educators to give us any moral or patriotic fibre, and of our worship of the common place, the third best, the stodgy Englishman, and of his garrulous cheap literature. Burning is much too good for the Sunday papers, but that will not cure the disease, which lies deep in the national mind. Resolutions will not cure it, neither will the substitution of less reprehensible papers and magazines have any permanent effect.

We must face right-about and give back to the people their own language. We are sure that many of those who have got their names into the papers for fine speeches do not realise the difficulty of the task they seek to perform. It is the mind of the people that must be improved. The work will be slow and it can be performed only by the personal contact of qualified teachers with those who require instruction. If any of those who have been denouncing the paper plague are willing to do sincere work, they should engage at once in the work of educating the young generation. The teaching of history, of the national language, of Irish literature, will give to the young a knowledge of Ireland which will be followed by a love of Ireland, and by the growth of true national ideals.

The boys, and girls who are trained in Irish music and dancing, who practise Irish games, who are made familiar with the gentleness, the bravery, the love of companions and of nature which characterises the Fenian tales and poetry, will never fall to the level of those for whom the cheap papers and magazines cater. It is not likely that the mind that has been refined by a training in Irish music, that has been informed by the reading of Irish history, and sharpened and exercised by the learning of the Irish language and the consideration of present-day Irish problems, will take to the reading of murder and divorce cases for relaxation.

Are those who have been denouncing the symptoms of the disease ready to come among the people and set right the system of education? How many priests will do as Father Costello of Dublin and the organisers and teachers of the Eire Og, Fianna na hEireann, and League classes have done? Father Costello has organised the boys of his parish into Claim Choluim Naomtha. He teaches them Irish, he instructs them in Irish history, he gets them to dress in Irish material, he gives them a sense of citizenship and of responsibility in rational affairs.

How many school managers of those who have joined the Vigilance Committees will Irishise their schools, as Father Ryan of Cnoc an Bhile, and Father Maguire of Kilskeery have done? Meetings have been held in denunciation of foreign literature in towns where no Gaelic League classes exist, and where the schools are as foreign almost as the schools of Yorkshire. It is admirable work to supply good English reading matter—it is absolutely necessary, but there will be no permanent change without the revival of the language, for the simple reason that without a little patriotism, which implies the revival of Irish, our people will be little good for God or country.

We want real workers, like the voluntary workers of the Gaelic League and the Temperance Societies, who will train themselves for the work of Irishising the children. It is easy to pass resolutions, to make speeches, even to write articles, but the men and women who are willing to go amongst the people and put the children on the right road are the only people who will do any permanent good. The school managers and teachers do not fulfil their duties and responsibilities to Ireland by merely satisfying the Board. Ireland has to be considered, and unless it be considered the same rotten fruit will continue to grow in our educational orchard.

Those who attempt to raise a whole race without love of country—that love which comes from intimate knowledge and the acceptance of duty, and is not to be confused with the windy patriotism that is ever talking and never performing—are attempting a task which Providence has never blessed. The people of the Gaelic League have no time for Sunday papers, but they must make more time for history teaching, for music and stepdancing, for hurling and camoguidheacht, and for lectures and exhibitions that will keep the people in touch with the latest developments in the sciences and branches of learning that affect our daily lives.

It is much easier to be merrier and brighter than the dull boy or girl of the West British school. Our songs are much more cheering than the "Fall in and Follow me" type of our seoinin neighbours. Our books are far more entertaining than those of Nat Gould, the favourite author of many Intermediate boys. Our worst plays are as good as many from London. Our games are not followed by the betting plague which follows rugby. Let us make the boys and girls active, informed, merry, and capable of passing leisure time with profit; let us give them strong, even aggressive, pride of country, and their morals will not need any extraordinary care.

Those parents who have joined the Vigilance Committees should see that their children are given an Irish education in schools. The school managers should see to their teachers. The college presidents should look to their programmes and to the games their students play. The Vigilance Committees themselves should not close their eyes to the fact that all Irish daily papers cater for the betting ring and its sharpers, whose racing literature is absolutely the lowest on the face of the globe.

We are ready to believe that all who have raised their voices against the foreign papers are anxious to do something to improve matters, but we firmly believe that their efforts will have been largely in vain unless they see to the schools where the taste for things foreign is created. Every movement produces a crop of demagogues. This movement, which is an educational one, and which is almost identical with the language movement, requires workers to bring it to a successful issue. Men and women to teach and inspire and organise the children are sorely required.

Many excellent people are anxious to help, but they are on the wrong track. They must come among the people and work amongst them, and they should prepare for that work.