Page:The Gaelic State in the Past & Future.djvu/93

 of these stateships for their use in order that they might as communities create industries within their territories. It would be to their interest to do so, if only to keep their population within their fellowships, and to the general wealth of the fellowships, instead of letting them drift to the stateships of the cities. But the general direction of such efforts would lie with the State, which would seek so to order things that there be in the national life a balance of all the parts that are necessary to a self-subsistent and thriving nation. Ireland would remain mainly agricultural, because of the richness of the soil and because the neglect of agriculture is national suicide; but she will cease to repeat the words of her enemies that her destiny is agricultural only. Her destiny is what she will make it by an organised and disciplined endeavour.

Finally there is the question of the language. This does not truly lie within the scope of the book, but only because without it the book would not be possible. Firstly, because it was in the language of the Irish Nation that the Irish State was created; secondly, because it was only when the language was recovered as an intellectual possession and passion that the outlines of that State could be seen clearly, the memories of which at that time were struggling in the acts and deeds of a resurgent people. We have been tracing a historical continuity, but the key of that continuity is the language. The State of the future might be built on the foundations of the past, but the Nation inhabiting it would not be the same Nation if it spoke by the tongue of a