: What's the Matter with Ireland? by Russell Ruth - Irish question; Ireland History War of Independence 1919-1921

@FreeBooksTue 06 Jun, 2023

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ELECTED GOVERNMENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF IRELAND

January 29, 1920.

Dear Miss Russell:

I have read the advance copy of your book, "What's the Matter with Ireland?", with much interest.

I congratulate you on the rapidity with which you succeeded in understanding Irish conditions and grasped the Irish viewpoint.

I hope your book will be widely read. Your first chapter will be instructive to those who have been deceived by the recent cry of Irish prosperity. Cries of this sort are echoed without thought as to their truth, and gain credence as they pass from mouth to mouth. I hope we shall have many more impartial investigators, such as you, who will take the trouble to see things for themselves first hand, and who will not be imposed upon by half-truths.

Having visited Ireland, I feel you cannot doubt that the poet was right--

"There never was a nation yet Could rule another well."

I imagine, too, that having seen the character of British rule there, you must realize better than before what it was your American patriots of '76 hastened to rid themselves of. In a country with such natural 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?

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