“Out of the Gaelic League’s de-Anglicizing propaganda have already grown a series of movements not only strongly political but each and all making for a separate independent Irish nation, freed from every link of the British connection.”

Were it not for its political object, the folly of this “revival of the Irish language” would be past belief.  The language of Shakespeare and Milton, of Gibbon and Macaulay, ought surely to be good enough for ordinary people; and it must be obvious to every reasoning being that at the present moment of the world’s history, English is one of the most useful languages in existence.  It is spoken by 40,000,000 of people in Europe and twice that number in America, not to mention Australasia and South Africa.  It is the language of commerce, of science, and of a vast amount of literature.  Europeans of various nationalities learn it, for the sake of its convenience; although, as we all know, one of the difficulties of modern life is that boys and girls have too much to study; educationalists everywhere complain that the curriculum is overloaded.  Its position in Ireland can be seen exactly by the census returns; for the papers contain a “language column,” each person being required to state whether he speaks English or Irish or both.  According to the returns of 1891, the total population was in round numbers 4,725,000; of whom 4,037,000 spoke English only, 643,000 both languages, and 44,000 Irish only.  And that trifling minority existed only in certain localities, and was confined to the less educated classes.  The only counties in which a majority of the population spoke Irish (including those who spoke both languages) were Mayo and Galway.  Yet now it is solemnly said that Ireland, being an independent nation, must have a language of its own; even in counties where no language but English has been spoken for centuries, and where probably none of the ancestors of the present population ever spoke any other language, Irish is being taught in the Roman Catholic primary schools, and the unhappy children who might be studying arithmetic or elementary geography, are wasting their time over a totally useless language.  I say “totally useless” deliberately; for the arguments usually brought forward in favour of the study, apart from the political one—­that Irish is of use in the study of philology, and that the MSS. of centuries ago contain fine specimens of poetry—­are too absurd to be worth discussing.  The real object of the Nationalists in “encouraging the revival of the Irish language” is clearly set out in the following words of T. MacSeamus in a recent number of the Irish Review:—­

“Most important of all, the Irish language is one of the things that distinguish us from England.  It is a mark of that separateness which it is the business of every Nationalist to maintain and emphasise on every possible occasion.  It is one of the signs—­perhaps the chief sign—­of nationality....  The Irish language is a weapon in our fight against England, and we cannot afford to throw away even the smallest weapon that may serve us in that struggle.”

And the policy of the League as regards the primary schools is made quite clear by the resolution passed unanimously at their annual meeting in 1912:—­