" In a
world in which right is little more than a secretion of might, in which,
unless a strong man armed keeps house, his enemies enter in, the
weakness of the Gaelic idea is obvious. But the Roman pattern too had a
characteristic vice which has led logically in our own time to a
monstrous and sinister growth of armaments.
To those who recognise in this deification of war the blackest menace of
our day the vision of a culture State is not without charm. The
shattering possibilities enfolded in it would have fevered Nietzsche and
fascinated Renan. But, be that as it may, Ireland played Cleopatra to
the Antony of the invaders. Some of them, indeed, the "garrison" pure
and simple, had all their interests centred not only in resisting but in
calumniating her. But the majority yielded gaily to her music, her
poetry, her sociability, that magical quality of hers which the Germans
call _Gemuetlichkeit_. In a few centuries a new and enduring phrase had
designated them as more Irish than the Irish themselves. So far as any
superiority of civilisation manifests itself in this first period it is
altogether on the side of Ireland.
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