"Today all things are made new. The Irish people, by their own deliberate choice, are left to their own resources. They will make their own laws, shape their own progress, establish their own traditions of government. Their future will be what they choose to make it and the honour of success or the shame of failure will fall upon themselves alone".
Thus the editorial in this newspaper greeted the birth of the Irish Free State 75 years ago today. The simplest of language well expressed the daunting challenge which faced the young people - and they were mostly young - who set about the task of nation-building. The Minister for Home Affairs, Kevin O'Higgins, recalled later the terror of standing amidst the ruins of one administration, the foundations of a new one not yet laid down, with "wild men screaming through the keyhole".
None of the institutions which stabilise today's Ireland were as yet secure. An army mutiny lay ahead. The new police force had already mutinied and been disarmed as a result. Few areas had functioning courts. Twelve thousand men crammed the prisons. A civil war was in progress and assassination and executions were almost daily occurrences. Agriculture was in ruins and industry was disrupted. A restoration of the modest prosperity of the century's early years seemed unlikely. Anything approaching today's economic success would have seemed an impossible dream.
If that long-gone editorial writer of 1922 were to measure today's Ireland against his admonitions of three quarters of a century ago, how would he think the Irish people, left to their own resources, have fared? He would surely stand amazed at the phenomenon of the Celtic Tiger economy. He would be more than a little astonished at Ireland's place in the European Union and on the wider world stage. He would marvel at the recognition world-wide of Irish culture, Irish music, Irish technology, Irish know-how, Irish standards of attainment. He would see, in the words of the President, Mrs McAleese, a nation in its stride. He would also see - and in the traditions of The Irish Times he would highlight them - the continuing inequities in this society, the unbroken cycles of deprivation and the continuing wide gap between rich and poor.
And if he looked North, he would be astonished to realise that 75 years on, a society which was divided in 1922 remains so even yet. He would read with disbelief of the years and months of negotiation and arbitration and positioning which have been necessary to achieve a halt to violence and the beginning of political dialogue. But he would probably also recognise that at the end of 1997 the unfinished business of 1922 finally looks as if it may be brought to a conclusion. The last remaining element of the great settlement between the peoples of these islands may be in sight.
He would probably also urge us to optimism. He would tell us that there was a time in this State when things were blacker and seemingly more intractable even than today in Northern Ireland. And he would point out to us that even the wild men, screaming through the keyhole as the architects of the State began their task, ultimately came round. Indeed, scarcely a decade later, some of them were the Government of Ireland, playing their part in helping to build the State we inhabit today. Independent Ireland's story over 75 years has many strands and many lessons. The most relevant of these, at this point, is that dialogue can gradually replace hatred. And politics can gradually displace the gun. Now we dare to hope that we stand on the threshold of a final and full transition to peace.