A synopsis of the state of Ireland is published in a recent issue of the American picture magazine Life.
The article is headed: "A New Flag Brings Hope to an Old and Pious Land." The flag referred to is the Tricolour there is no doubt about that, because the colours are named. I was not aware that there was anything particularly new about it in A.D. 1939.
To continue:- "Ireland is a lovely green island about the size of Maine. A few ranchers raise cattle on its central plain. The mass of its people grub for a living on the coastal mountains." Personally, I thought that all those people living in the great plain of Ireland and the Golden Vale were important. The Government must be only pulling our legs about all of them.
"The Irish aristocrats shown on these pages (William Dermod O'Brien, Earl of Iveagh, Mrs Trent, Mr E. C. Alley, Madame Maud Gonne McBride, Marchioness of Waterford, Duke of Leinster) hate and fear the New Deal of Premier de Valera much as U.S. conservatives feel towards President Roosevelt. They even whisper that de Valera has giggling fits, and is probably crazy."
The essay ends with this staggering fact: "Facts are still unpopular in Ireland. Sentiment, piety, a good song and a good phrase, friendship and the past, are what work magic on the Irish."
To my mind, facts do not seem particularly popular in America either.
The Irish Times, August 17th, 1939.