tenants. This property was not, incidentally, a gift, but was to be held by
Mr. Vandeleur until the tenants were able to pay for it. An elected
committee of nine, and a general assembly of all men and women members of
the society, were the government. The committee's decision against an
offending member of society could be enforced or not by the members. The
success of the society is acknowledged. Through it was introduced the first
reaping machine into Ireland. By it the condition of the toiler was much
raised, and might have been more greatly elevated but for the fact that the
community had to pay a very heavy annual rental in kind to Mr. Vandeleur.
The experiment came to a premature end, however, because of the passing of
the estate out of the hands of Mr. Vandeleur, and the non-recognition of
the right of such a community to hold a lease or to act as tenants under
the land laws of Great Britain.

"Why should there not be a modernized form of the ancient Gaelic state?"
asked the bishop.

When I spoke of the Russian soviet, and stated that I heard that the Roman
Catholic church had spread in eight dioceses under the new government, the
bishop nodded his head. The Church, he said, had nothing to fear from the
soviet.

"Certainly not from the Limerick soviet," I suggested. "It was there that I
saw a red-badged guard rise to say the Angelus."

"Isn't it well," smiled the bishop, "that communism is to be
Christianized?"

[Footnote 1: Notice was given by the General Prison Board of Ireland on
November 24, 1919, that no prisoner on hunger strike would obtain release.