These, then, were the men who guided in greater or less degree the
opinions of the young men and women of the Early Twentieth Century in
the islands of Great Britain and Ireland. "A. E." greatly influenced
young Irishmen who remained curiously unimpressed either by Mr. Moore
or Mr. Yeats. Rumours of his doctrine came to the ears of young
Englishman, but they had no personal contact with him as they had
with Mr. Shaw and Mr. Wells and Mr. Belloc and Mr. Chesterton. It is
not possible to calculate the extent to which these men moulded the
minds of my generation, but indisputably it was large. No one who grew
from youth to manhood between 1900 and 1914 could escape from their
influence, even if he were unconscious of it. The greater part of that
generation died in the War. The young men who drew their ideas chiefly
from Mr. Wells and Mr. Shaw, directly or indirectly, did not live to
make their world, and so we can never tell what good or ill would have
resulted to mankind had they succeeded to authority. Their bones are
buried in France and Italy, in Palestine and Turkey, in Russia and
East Africa, on the shores of Gallipoli and in the marshes of Salonica,
in the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean and the North Sea; and there
is nothing to remember them by but broken lands in France and the
broken vows of politicians the world over. These young men went out to
die in a mood of selflessness that has never, perhaps, been equalled or
excelled in the history of mankind; and when their backs were turned,
they were betrayed. We cannot look on them again, but we may find
comfort in our loss by remembering and considering the men who formed
the faith they held.
"A. E."
(GEORGE WILLIAM RUSSELL)
I
In all the books on Ireland, considered nationally, socially and
economically, that have been written in the past twenty years, two
men inevitably are mentioned: Sir Horace Plunkett and "A. E.," whose
lawful name is George William Russell. Men of affairs in most parts
of the world have heard of them, and I imagine that very few of the
people who go to Ireland with any serious purpose fail to visit them.
I saw Sir Horace Plunkett receive an ovation from a large audience in
New York which could only have been given to him by people who had
some knowledge and appreciation of his work for his country; and I
was impressed by the fact that many Americans asked me to tell them
something of "A. E." And yet, though the wide world is not ignorant
of their worth, it is very likely that they are less generally known
in Ireland than some paltry politician with a gift for street corner
rhetoric. Once, in Dublin, I praised Sir Horace Plunkett to a man from
the county of Cavan, who interrupted me to say that no one in his
village had ever heard of Sir Horace. He seemed to imagine that the
ignorance of his neighbours proved a demerit in the founder of the
co-operative movement in Ireland. Your villagers, said I, may never
have heard of Sir Horace Plunkett and are probably very familiar with
the names of Mr. Charles Chaplin and Miss Mary Pickford, but does
that prove that Mr. Chaplin is a greater man than Sir Horace? I am
not indifferent to the merits of Mr. Chaplin--I would go a long way
to see him in the movies--but I hope I shall never succumb to this
modern shoddy democracy which will not believe that a man possesses
quality unless his name is printed frequently in the newspapers and is
familiarly known to the rabble. It may be that Paudeen, unfit to do
more than "fumble in a greasy till," as Mr. Yeats wrote in his bitter
poem, "September, 1913," knows little or nothing of Sir Horace Plunkett
whose life labours have brought so much of comfort and prosperity to
him--but who cares what Paudeen knows? Let him grub in the soil, as
God made him to grub, while men of mind and quality look after his
affairs. It is sufficient for the knowledgeable minority that _they_
know of Sir Horace and realize the value of the great work he has
done for his country. A false optimism bids us to believe that "we
needs must love the highest when we see it," but a sense of reality
convinces us that the highest has to fight harder for recognition than
the lowest, and that the way to the throne of heaven passes through
Golgotha, the place of a skull.