The Irish Mind

MR. JUPP: It is a very happy circumstance that within a few days of St. Patrick's Day we can welcome as our guest speaker His Excellency The Ambassador of Ireland in Canada, Dr. Thomas Joseph Kiernan.

Dr. Kiernan was born in Dublin in 1897 and received his education at St. Mary's College and the University College, Dublin. He has a Master of Arts Degree from the National University of Ireland and is a Doctor of Philosophy at the University of London. For a short period from 1919 to 1924 he was an Inspector of Taxes m the Inland Revenue Branch and then became Secretary of the High Commission in London during the historically important period 1925 to 1935. There followed a period as Director of Radio Eireann until 1941 when he was appointed Minister of Plenipotentiary at the Holy See. A long period of residence in Australia followed from 1946 to 1955, the first half of which was in the post of High Commissioner and thereafter as Ambassador to Australia. Immediately prior to his appointment as Ambassador to Canada, he was Minister Plenipotentiary with the personal rank of Ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany.

Dr. Kiernan's published works reflect the experiences he has had and his studies because he has written about "British War Finance and the Consequences," his "Study in Irish National Finance," "History of the Financial Administration of Ireland" and also "A Study in Ecclesiastical Statistics." From his Australian period came the "Irish Exiles in Australia" and "Transportation from Ireland to Sydney: 1791-1816." We hope that Dr. Kiernan will be in Canada long enough to write about the relationship between this country and Ireland. His chosen subject today, however, covers the world as he will speak on "The Irish Mind."

DR, KIERNAN: The card of invitation which I received to come to hear myself describes me as an orator. I have been called many names during my life, but not until now an orator. In the Ireland of today, we are more than a little suspicious of oratory. Parliament should, I suppose, be the last refuge of oratory; and certainly nobody goes to the Dail or Seanad in Dublin to enjoy the speeches. But if we have lost interest in oratory, we have not lost control of language; nor craftsmanship in the moulding and manipulation of meaningful words and phrases. Otherwise, how could I dare come to talk to you on such a subject as the mind of Ireland? To describe a policy or an economy is a matter-of-fact

task, of choice and emphasis of facts. To describe a racial mind is dealing in the anima, touching the spirit; and all that I can do will be to try, with your minds following mine, to glimpse here and there; and my talk will be a failure if you do not see it as an attempt of mind to speak sympathetically to mind. There can, at best, be only a very partial exposition and understanding.

That there is a racial mind, that the individual is not just derived, in his mental characteristics, from parents, from home and school and social environment, but from a much further-back and infinitely more complex build-up -that, I think, is incontestable. One can, in broadest terms, speak of the European mind and of the Asian mind for instance.

In parenthesis, but without irrelevance, in even the most superficial study of the Canadian mind, it would surely be hazardous to see it as Canadian without first looking into the racial streams that, in their varieties of confluence, are still very much on the move, and in the making. It is often said that Canada derives from two main racial strains. There are, in fact, three which, whether from numbers, or from differences of background, or from the contribution made to the development of your country, can be called main strains. They are, as you are aware, the English, the French, and the Celtic. Nothing is gained, and much may be lost to the Canadian national consciousness, by ignoring the influence, and, I make bold to say, the value of the Celtic strain.

Expressions of the mind of a people may be discerned in a variety of manifestations: in music and song; in literature and drama; in painting and sculpture; in the whole of the activities of life.

Ireland is rich in songs of the people. There are also many songs about Ireland written by strangers to Ireland; the sugary songs of the "Does your mother come from Ireland?" kind. But no stranger can ever write the songs of the people, the tunes of the popular voice, made to captivate the popular ear.

The Irish ballad, like the ballads of other countries, comes very far back from the nation's infancy. It is an expression of history, of the history of the people in their employments and amusements, their wars and victories and defeats, their births and marriages and deaths; not in the cold print of the text book or the newspaper, but made into the music of the hearth, and therefore of the heart, the unsophisticated heart of the people. The words of the ballad and the music of the ballad are the first parents of our literature.

And they endure from generation to generation. Songhits, with a season or so of popular appeal, are familiar enough to us from the radio. They die when supplanted by the next latest musical hit, the next piece of swing or rock 'n roll. They owe their popularity to their cheap and easy sentiment, and perhaps also to the type of accompanying music, which has been described as an irregular movement from bar to bar, and indeed they have an early closing. There is no early closing for the songs of Ireland.

Irish music, so much parodied, is not as easy as it looks. Art is easier than artlessness. The music of Ireland is natural music. It is therefore emotional music. The structure and the language of this Irish music are simple in their warmth of feeling, graceful in their ease and beauty, measured and lilting music, so that the memory clings to it and clothes it with scenes remembered and felt; or even felt without ever having been known except in the long history of the emotions. And that is why it is easy to recognize the spurious Irish song. No stranger can write the songs of a people. The imitations are like flowers made of paper; the originals are, just simply, like flowers. Warmth of feeling cannot be feigned. Simple emotion cannot be planned. In all the grandiose planning of this age, the songs forever evade the planners. A national anthem cannot be made to order or got from a competition. The people's songs cannot be created, as a city can be, from blueprints. Of them it may in truth be said that the voice of the people, the singing voice of the people, is the voice of God.

The narrative poetry of the old Irish songs, short and pithy, simple and sincere, is linked to the nation's story and struggles. But the harshness of history is softened in the songs. One cannot sing rancour. If at times the voice of the song is plaintive, that is no more than a reflection of broken homesteads and sweltering emigrant ships. But the songs of Ireland ring, too, in marching words. Courage is consecrated in song that speaks the heart of a people.

Irish songs are not easy to sing, because they need to be interpreted naturally and artlessly, made part of the breathing beauty of life, as easy as the breeze of the air in the trees. Whenever, in the interpretation, art intrudes on nature, it is no longer Irish song. These songs need, indeed, no piano accompaniment or violin obligato. Their best accompaniment is the beat of the listening heart. They are the songs of the fireside, the songs of the home, for singing in the fields, or lilting at a cradleside. They come oddly through the mechanism of the radio. They are songs to sing where people gather, homely songs. Many of the emigrants who left Ireland brought with them two well-thumbed books: Moore's Irish Melodies, and The Key to Heaven. The old Irish songs, songs to consecrate a home, are part of the Irish key to heaven.

An expression of the mind of a people can be discerned by its use of radio. I spent six years in charge of the Irish broadcasting service and can speak of it from firsthand knowledge. The most obvious difference between radio programmes in Ireland and in Canada is that we have no commercial stations. We have had tantalising financial offers in this field; but the fact remains that we. have no commercial stations. A very limited amount of commercially sponsored broadcasting is permitted within the general framework and this service is limited to Irish manufacturing concerns.

From my experience of radio in Ireland and in other countries-because I made it my job to study the details of broadcasting in other countries and the public reactions -I am convinced of the ready response the listening public is prepared to give to good-class entertainment. There is a tendency to play down to sections of public taste, and to underrate the mental capacities of the general body of listeners. What the listeners want is analogous to what a diner wants when he goes into a restaurant. He doesn't quite know; except what "disagrees" with him. He has to have a look at the menu; and an individual's tastes vary from day to day or so. But if the restaurant can provide him with good fare, his appetite will be stimulated by it. "I wasn't hungry till I sat down to eat" is often the way it is with radio listeners; and if they can draw on a menu of good music or well-constructed radio drama, well-acted for the ear, their taste grows, and in fact their taste is being formed. Cheap stuff on the air forms a cheap national taste.

Our programmes are bilingual, with items in Irish and English. We have a big listening public in Scotland and in Northern England; and with the near-by competition of the more richly-financed British Broadcasting Corporation's and the European programmes, we find that the more Irish our programmes are, the greater their appeal. We arrange interchanges of programmes with the B.B.C. as well as international programmes; and are easily able to get visiting conductors and soloists of international reputation. Our programmes, judging by the general terms of criticism, have been improving year by year since broadcasting was started; which is what one should expect, since broadcasting, properly used, should broaden and intensify the listening interest in good material, and there is an unlimited field for improvement in every country.

I found that the radio, far from destroying interest in local amateur efforts can be used to stimulate them and to arouse a healthy local competition. The recent growth of local festivals of music and drama in Ireland is not unconnected with the influence of radio.

There is a large amount of local dramatic art in Ireland. It is a form of expression of the mind of the people. Large, expensive halls are not by any means a prerequisite. In the proper sequence, they have a second

place to the writing and acting of drama. That was our experience with the Abbey Theatre, which is now so well known. The playwrights emerged first; then the special kind of actors to perform these Irish plays; and since then, the Abbey Theatre has become a training-ground for actors for the English theatre. That drama movement has spread to the smaller towns, and is a great advantage to small-town community life. For there is no doubt that we have to solve the difficulty of the loneliness and lack of social amenities in the Irish rural and small-town districts, to avoid a further drain of population into the cities to swell their bloated populations. I am not sure that it would not be a good thing to make the cities pay more taxes to finance amenity developments in the smaller and socially-healthier areas, and to encourage the spread

of population. However, we are doing it by local, voluntary effort, through Young Farmer's Clubs and Parish Guilds, which have built halls for concerts and plays, formed film units, developed parish libraries and study groups. The aim of these is to develop a community spirit in every Irish parish and, as they put it themselves, to drive out class antagonism and bring the people of each parish community together in Christian charity. These local groups are our attempt at an answer to the now widespread materialistic conception of human life which is fostered by the congested, competitive civilization developed by excessive urbanisation.

Nobel prizes were given to Yeats, the Irish poet; and to Walton, the Irish scientist. Yeats was the outstanding leader of the Irish Literary Renaissance. Nowhere can a truer mirror of the Irish mind be found than in the movements that came together, with Douglas Hyde's Gaelic League for the revival of the Irish language, the theatre of Synge and Yeats and Lady Gregory, the poetry and plays and novels that mark the literary re-birth of the nation. The inspiration of this movement came from the discovery of the ancient literature of Ireland and the folk literature.

It was this renaissance that gave the death-blow to the squireen type of phoney Irish writing which created that charmingly-inane myth wearing a "caubeen", smoking a "dudheen", long upper-lipped, with shamrocks growing from his ears-the stage Irishman. He was liked by the English, says Arland Usher, "for the good reason that he was in fact an Englishman-a colonial variety of the jolly English squire." I may, then, say a word about Irish humour, since humour, or the lack of it, is a manifestation of mind. We have our playboys, court-jesters to the serious business of life. Apart from them, and we very often export them as being a little boring at home, our particular sense of humour is characterised by the capacity of being able to laugh at ourselves. When you come to think of it, there is no more humourous subject to a man, if he looks at the matter rightly, than himself. It costs nothing to have a laugh at oneself and it flatters the little vanity of the people who are so uncertain of themselves that they have to be pompous.

A second characteristic of our humour is its whimsical approach to subjects that might be called grim. The Germans call it gallows-humour; the French, 1'humour noir. One of the most successful recent Irish plays in Dublin and London, "The Quare Fellah" by Brendan Behan, was based on bits and pieces of humour in a prison on the occasion of the execution of one of its inmates. After all, if we have to die, why not be cheerful about it? Members might bear that piece of Irish advice in mind, as it may come in useful to all of you some day -or night.

Here is a bit of real humour I picked out of a Canadian newspaper recently. Of all places to find humourous writing, it was that excellent financial review, "The Financial Post". "It is a melancholy thought that in the bad old days of British domination, the Irish supplied outstanding men in literature, the armed services, the drama and even in the diplomatic service. But since Eire was made an independent republic, the fruitfulness of her womb has changed to barrenness. All of which would suggest that a moderate oppression inspires people to great things." However, that gem was in the London letter and so is not an example of Canadian humour. And the joke of it is that while it was being written, a living Irishman's play was the talk of London.

I have mentioned Walton, our Nobel prize winner, who, in collaboration with the Cambridge scientist Rutherford, pioneered the research that led to the splitting of the atom. In the field of research, we have in the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies a centre that has attracted some men of the highest qualifications in physics. That branch of the Institute was until recently under the direction of Edwin Schroedinger. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for his now famous theory of atomic processes. The Schroedinger wave mechanics is now firmly established as a major part of the fundamentals of theoretical physics and chemistry and has had a decisive influence on subsequent development in the field of atomic physics. He, more than any other of the professors in the Dublin Institute, inspired the work which has won for the Institute international recognition and fame.

Mention of Schroedinger leads me to point out the readiness with which the new Ireland is anxious to avail of contributions to its full national life from outside the country. When, eighteen years ago, Mr. De Valera invited Schroedinger to take the post in Ireland, Schroedinger was an Austrian Jew escaping from the Hitler persecution.

In industry also we have been anxious to avail ourselves of initiative from outside Ireland. Just now, Canadian companies are opening up lead and gold mines in Ireland. We have the closest and friendliest co-operation with British industrial life; and many of our successful factories are due to British initiative. And I take this opportunity of saying that we would welcome more Canadian initiative. We have made the terms of capital investment very attractive. I shall not delay you with any technical details but if any members of the Empire Club are interested in this subject, I shall be most happy to enter into particulars.

One of Schroedinger's works which I find on sale in Canada is "What Is Life and Other Scientific Essays" (Doubleday Anchor Books). I might say a few words about what Irish life means. For tourists, it is a life unlike anything that can be experienced elsewhere; because in a tiny island, there is a kaleidoscopic variety of natural scenery and of human individuality. Every Irishman is a person; and I believe that the most interesting persons are rarely the persons of importance. Ireland is full of people of no importance who are personalities refreshing to encounter. The playwright Shaw has put into the mouth of Broadbent, the Englishman, the words: "Ireland, Sir, for good or evil, is like no other place under heaven; and no man can touch its sod or breathe its air without becoming better or worse."

In this brief glimpsing at facets of the Irish mind, I have touched on certain positive manifestations, without being able to fill in the details of the modern output of literature, of poetry and novels and plays; because each would need a separate and far fuller treatment. You may expect me to shade the picture with some negative touches; and I can think of none better, on account of some publicity the subject has received in your Club, than the censorship of publications position.

There is a certain amount of misconception about the Irish system of censorship; and while the misconceptions get a good press, so to speak, I have not yet seen a defence, or indeed an attempt at clear explanation of what the censorship is in practice. In Australia I am aware that the censorship of obscene publications is the responsibility of the Customs Department. I believe it is the same in Canada; and in England, it is a matter for the Customs and the Police authorities. A difficulty about that is that one can never be certain whether one is breaking the law or not; since the lists of censored publications are kept secret.

Well, every country is entitled, under democratic government, to make up its own mind on this problem, which has arisen because of the universality of popular education. When John Milton attacked the censorship, only a minority of English people could read. It is far different now, and the printing presses are more active and the profits, especially from sex literature, much greater.

The first point on which to be clear is that the Irish people approve of the form of censorship of publications which we have adopted. There is, I am glad to say, a minority taking the opposite view. It would give a very untrue picture of the mind of present-day Ireland to suggest that there is anything like uniformity of thinking. But on this issue, the great majority want to have kept from sale books which are obscene or indecent or in their general tendency indecent.

Now comes the difficulty. Who is to decide what is indecent in writing, and, more difficult still, what is in general tendency indecent? We have made two decisions on that. The first is not to entrust this work to specialists in revenue matters or in police matters. We have a Board and we have also an Appeal Board. The members are chosen for their knowledge of literature, and Protestants are duly represented on these Boards. I should say at once that in this matter there is no difference of opinion between the religious denominations. The Board is free from pressure of any kind. It would be a poor type of committee of public-spirited citizens if they could be held guilty of pandering to some pressure group. In truth, that accusation has never been brought, for it would be patently absurd. The only strong pressure group is a very vocal one and consists of authors in Ireland who have had some books banned. As the banning of a book may, I am sorry to say, increase its sale in other places, some uncharitable people think that our writers who protest do so in order to keep interest alive in the censorship and would be very disappointed if it came to an end.

The second decision we reached was that there would be no hush-hush about censorship. The books and magazines censored are publicly listed, and from time to time a complete list is published so that book-sellers and others may know just where they stand.

But what seems to me to be the most telling answer to critics is that there is not, from the beginning of censorship, a single work of ideas banned; no book dealing with even the most unorthodox philosophy, no belles lettres; nothing in fact but fiction and pseudo-medical works. So that the charge, sometimes unfairly made, that there is a censorship limiting freedom of thinking is quite unfounded. If any of you have had first-hand knowledge of pre-Hitler Germany, you will, I think, agree that the vast sale, avidly read by German youth, of perversion books had its direct sequence in the horrors and sadism of the concentration camps.

We have, and we practise, all of the freedoms in Ireland; including the freedom of publishing and of reading newspapers on Sunday. Permit me to consider that particular manifestation of the public mind. In Dublin we have two Sunday newspapers, the Sunday Press and the Sunday Independent. In addition, there is a large circulation of the English Sunday newspapers. The popular English Sunday newspapers publish special editions for the Irish market, because if the English editions of these popular newspapers came to Ireland, the chances are, more likely than not, that they would have to be restricted by our censorship. In other words, we have Sunday newspapers, but not any kind of Sunday newspapers: and that is simply the exercise of freedom guarded by prudence.

In the Diplomatic List published by the Queen's Printer in Ottawa, there are given the National Days of the 47 nations which have diplomatic representation in Canada; and after each is given the foundation date for the National Day, such as for the United States of America, the date of Independence, 1776. The earliest date in the list is the year 461 and it is for St. Patrick's Day. In every free country in the world, there is a St. Patrick's Day celebration of some kind. The mind of Ireland has carried far. To talk to you about it is to talk to you of something you already know about. The mind of Ireland is in no strange atmosphere in Canada; and though I have been able to give you only hints of glimpses of it, it is, to hundreds of thousands of Canadians, giving a glimpse of what is part of their own racial minds.

I know that, here in Toronto, St. Patrick's Day is held in affectionate remembrance; in such intimately affectionate remembrance that it can be joked about; for that is a test of affectionate relations, that they can be joked about. I know that a much later Irish feast is celebrated too in Toronto, the Twelfth of July. In anticipation of being invited to Toronto to join the 12th of July celebrations, and to drink a toast to Indivisible Ireland, I wish you all a happy St. Patrick's Day.

THANKS OF THE MEETING were expressed by Mr. Bruce J. Legge, Second Vice-President of the Club.