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DR. EOIN MACNEILL The Chief Living Historian of Ireland "I strange, said a friend of mine the everyday, that Ireland has no contemporary Catholic writers such as England has. For instance, she has no Belloce or Christopher Dawson or Maurice Baring." I answered, saying: "How many contemporary Catholic writers in Ireland do you know of? Do you know of half a dozen? I don't want to you to name Yeats or Joyce or Sean O'Casey. For they, of course, aren't Catholic or counterparts of the three English writers you mentioned." He did not know half a dozen Irish Catholic writers. He did not know that the most promising Catholic poet writing in English was a young Irishman. He did not know that there was a Catholic cultural fermentation in Ireland which is doing, and will do, remarkable things for the Faith and mankind. That it is a leaven working in many gifted men and a woman. Those of us who take an interest in Catholic literature and its contemporary writers must, more than once, have heard such an assertion as that of my friend, whose blood and name, by the way, are Irish, but who has not the opportunity to keep abreast of what is being done in Ireland to aid the Faith and to create beauty through the written word. How can one form an opinion on such a matter by reading solely, or almost solely, of Catholic writers in England and of what they have accomplished, however splendid and worthy? There is no foundation for the forming of an opinion in ignorance, though that inane thing—for empty it is—is an excellent, if unsubstantial, foundation for a prejudice. A RADICAL POINT. Another point—and one that is radical—Ireland is a Catholic country. There is no Catholic minority in that literally faith-ful land. It was not necessary for gifted writers there, forming an intellectual Catholic spearhead, to attack such long as in Britain maintained the long dominance of false "history" assertively, if unhistorically and profoundly, Protestant. There was an atmosphere in England in which Catholics found it difficult to breathe. The foulness of this counterfeit history had to be blown away. Indeed, much that is noisome still remains, though, unfortunately, it does not stink in the nostrils of most of the English people. For instance, so far from Dean Inge's being affected by anything coming between the wind and his gentility, that dignitary regards the mephitic Protestant version of history as being fragrance itself. There was a cleaner, a more wholesome atmosphere in Ireland. There was, of course, a political and economic domination, cruel and ruthless, to be fought. It was against this that Irish writers directed their vigilance, industry and literary powers. They were true to the ancient Faith where. There was no people had been for to write books for the conversion of their fellow-countrymen. But there was pressing need, life-or-death need, for them to light, with the brand of burning words, a fire in the hearts of their people against the alien persecution and…