God on Door, Devils in Office

God on Door, Devils in Office

Such exciting letters as only hopping-mad, cussing-mad Irishmen can write poured in by the mailbagful last week upon Dublin's brindle-bearded George William Russell, poet, painter, philosopher and sprightly sage, famed as "AE." As greatly beloved as any living Irishman, Poet Russell had roused the furies by a pungent critique* of Ireland's secret and romantic brotherhoods as they exist today. A tough old patriot himself, he finds the brotherhoods flabby-muscled, fatheaded, sunk like the Ku Klux Klan in babbittry, bigotry. Wrote he: "The secret societies of a generation ago had for object the freedom of Ireland. There was good reason, too, for their being secret. "All small nationalties submerged in great empires tend to develop a subterranean political life. It is impossible to fight great battles openly, and the very character of their ideals makes open propaganda difficult. Whatever may be said against the secret societies of a generation ago, their members were not self-seeking and their ideals were defensible. "There has been a change . . . a distinct deterioration. "A new kind of secret or semisecret society has come into existence, whose object seems to be, by a kind of religious masonry, to procure business jobs and contracts for members, and they threaten, bully or cajole barristers, solicitors and businessmen into membership.

"It is," concluded AE with all the scorn at his command, "a commercialization of Religion: using God to get jobs! ... It suggests an office with 'GOD' in large letters over the front door and devils busy inside."

Most of the abusive, threatening letters received by Poet Russell last week were from members of "The Knights of Columbanus" (not Columbus), a semisecret Roman Catholic organization founded a half-dozen years ago at Belfast. But a few persons belonging to other "deteriorated" Irish societies also seemed to feel insulted.

* In a parting editorial in his Irish Statesmen, defunct last month.

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