We
have both got something to live for greater than patriotism and
imperialism, greater because it includes them both.
II.
Irish-American Feeling
Until I came to America I had not the least idea of the depth of hatred
which has existed among Irish-Americans toward England. Nothing that I
ever encountered in Ireland itself is comparable with this transatlantic
fury of unforgiving hate.
An Irishman who had held very high office in America, a well-educated, a
kindly, and a judicious man, told me that when war with Germany was in
the air he could not prevent himself from hailing this opportunity for
declaring his hatred, his undying hatred, of England. His father had
suffered frightfully in the great famine; every story he ever heard at
his mother's knee was a story of English tyranny, English brutality,
English rapacity; England, for him, stood at the rack centre, the
lustful and bestial slave driver, the cruel and merciless extortioner.
This man's good judgment, however, would not suffer him to approve of
German militarism, and as events moved forward he gave his support more
and more to the cause of the Allies.
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