I tried to elicit from him exactly what he had in his mind when, in one of the articles to which I have referred, he advocated 'a reconstruction of Ireland on distinctive national lines.' I hoped to find that his psychological study of my countrymen would enable him to throw some light upon the means by which play could be given at home to the latent capacities of the race.

I found that he was in entire accord with my view, that the chief difficulty in the way of constructive statesmanship was the defect in the Irish character about which I have said so much.

I was prepared for that conclusion, for I had already seen the lack of initiative admirably appreciated in the following illuminating sentence of his:--'The Celt will help someone else to do the thing that other has in mind, and will help him with great zeal and devotion; but he will not start to do the thing he himself has thought of.'[32] But I was disappointed when he bade me his first and last good-bye that I had not convinced him that there was any way out of the Irish difficulty other than political changes, for which, at the same time, he appeared to think the people singularly unfitted.
The fact is we had arrived at the point where the student of Irish life usually finds himself in a _cul de sac_.

If he has accurately observed the conditions, he is face to face with a problem which appears to be in its nature insoluble.

For at every turn he finds things being done wrong which might so easily be done right, only that nobody is concerned that they should be done right.