resources of the country. A most illuminating commentary upon the thesis of The Gael.
Nearly two years ago Mr. Brinsley MacNamara published his first novel, which I discussed in this place. The Valley of the Squinting Windows has since reached the American public, and no doubt his new book, The Clanking of Chains, will follow. Having been stoned by the villagers of the place described in that earlier volume, the author must have been prepared for another violent repudiation. Mr. MacNamara continues to show us the reverse of the medal; the epigraph of this new novel is Mr. Yeats' lines:
"Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
'Tis with O'Leary in the grave."
The Clanking of Chains is the curious complement of The Gael; it shows the seamy side of Irish nationalism. That is not to say, as perhaps the British propagandists would hope, that he has written a melodramatic tale of Sinn Fein gunmen, murdering policemen, and plotting sinister schemes in conjunction with Bolshevists and Hohenzollerns. What he has done is to challenge the comfortable and comforting convention which Ireland likes to think is her likeness. Every nation has a popular conception of itself, and the writer who upsets the current idealization risks unpopularity, if not a definite charge of consorting with the hosts of darkness. Yet, so far no public manifestation of anger has greeted the successor to The Valley of the Squinting Windows. The Ballycullen of The Clanking of Chains is a remorseless exposure of the worst side of political and social life in our country towns. In this community of opportunist and verbal patriots lives a rather futile idealist, Michael Dempsey, who dreams of heroic deeds, but is reduced to despair by the brutal tragi-comedy of life. When it is safe and easy and profitable, Ballycullen is on the side of the angels, but while men and women are fighting and dying and suffering, the crowd is content to belittle the effort, and to sneer at its supporters. Mr. MacNamara shows how the new movement in Irish nationalism is reacted upon by these people, how they can touch nothing that they do not disfigure and destroy.
The theme is the eternal theme which Ibsen handled in An Enemy of the People—the malevolent hostility of the crowd
