What causes most despair to anyone who tries to persuade people in England of the real state of affairs in Ireland is the answer that invariably follows every attempt to overcome a deep-rooted incredulity, that “we can do nothing until you Irishmen agree among yourselves.” One of the impressions that affected me most strongly on returning to Ireland after an absence of four years, was that of a unanimity among all classes such as has never existed in Ireland before. In a sense, it is the unity that is to be found among the passengers of a ship which has been set on fire. But the present unity of political feeling in Ireland is far more deep than any transient emotion of that kind. It is much more genuine and more remarkable than was the unity which prevailed in this country during the war. It is no mere suspension of party strife, but the real and lasting discovery of common interests and a common outlook upon life.

Go where you please in Ireland, outside the four eastern counties of Ulster, and you will find only one attitude and one aspiration from Donegal to Wexford, or from Galway to Dublin. In what follows, I do not speak of Unionist Ulster. The gulf between the four Unionist counties and the rest of Ireland is more open and more difficult to bridge over than it has ever been. Those whose deliberate policy it has been to frustrate the national movement in Ireland by setting North against South have achieved their purpose as fully as they could ever have wished.