Then there is education. English public men have been brought up to
assume that in Ireland education must be a battleground inevitably, and
from the first. It would be a mere paradox to say that this question,
which sunders parties the world over as with a sword, will leave opinion
in Ireland inviolately unanimous. But our march to the field of
controversy will be over a non-controversial road. Union policy has left
us a rich inheritance of obvious evils. The position of the primary
teachers is unsatisfactory, that of the secondary teachers is
impossible. When we attempt improvement of both will "Ulster" fight? And
there is something even more human and poignant. The National Schools of
this country are in many cases no better than ramshackle barns. Unless
the teacher and the manager, out of their own pockets, mend the broken
glass, put plaster on the walls, and a fire in the grate, the children
have got to shiver and cough for it. Winter in Ireland, like the King in
constitutional theory, is above politics. When its frosts get at the
noses, and fingers, and sometimes the bare toes, of the children it
leaves them neither green nor orange but simply blue.
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