[The Open Secret of Ireland by T. M. Kettle]@TWC D-Link bookThe Open Secret of Ireland CHAPTER I 22/26
In his "Political Psychology of the English" he declares that the haughty, taciturn, solitary, unassimilative temperament of England, so admirable from the point of view of self-development, shows its worst side and comes to a malign florescence in the history of Ireland.
It explains why "the relations of Ireland with England have been, for so many centuries, those of a captive with his jailer, those of a victim with his torturer." I pass over De Beaumont, Von Raumer, Perraud, Paul-Dubois, Filon, Bonn. The considerations already adduced ought to be enough to lead the English reader to certain conclusions which are fundamental.
For the sake of clearness they may be repeated in all their nudity: England has failed in Ireland. Her failure has been due to defects of her own character, and limitations of her outlook.
The same defects which corrupted her policy in the past distort her vision in the present. Therefore, if she is to understand and to solve the Irish Question, she must begin by breaking the hard shell of her individualism, and trying to think herself into the skin, the soul, and the ideals of the Irish nation. Now the English reader is after all human.
If he has endured so far the outrage on his most sacred prejudices perpetrated in this chapter he must at this moment be hot with resentment.
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