The Open Secret of Ireland by T. M. (Thomas Michael) Kettle
page 16 of 122 (13%)
page 16 of 122 (13%)
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of England."
Like all foreigners he takes Ireland as the one conspicuous and flaming failure of England. In that instance she has muddled, as usual, but she has not muddled through. "The Anglo-Saxons, those great colonisers of far-off lands, have in their own United Kingdom succeeded only in inflicting a long martyrdom on Ireland. The insular situation of England had for pendant the insular situation of Ireland; the two islands lie there face to face. The English and the Irish, although intellectually very much alike, have preserved different characters. And this difference cannot be due essentially to the racial element, for nearly half Ireland is Germanic. It is due to traditions and customs developed by English oppression." Having summarised the main lines of British policy in Ireland, he concludes: "It is not easy to detect here any sign of the 'superiority of the Anglo-Saxons.'" With Fouillée we may associate Emile Boutmy. In his "Political Psychology of the English" he declares that the haughty, taciturn, solitary, unassimilative temperament of England, so admirable from the point of view of self-development, shows its worst side and comes to a malign florescence in the history of Ireland. It explains why "the relations of Ireland with England have been, for so many centuries, those of a captive with his jailer, those of a victim |
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