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