That is the task of every
generation, to take up the uncompleted work of the former one, and hand
on to their successors an achievement and a heritage. Youth recognises
this instinctively, and every generation will take a step in advance of
its predecessor, putting by its prejudices and developing its truth.
Every individual may know this from his own experience, and from it he
knows that those who are now voicing old bitter cries are ageing, and
will soon pass and leave no successors. Not that prejudice will die for
ever. Each new day will have its own, but that which is now dividing and
hampering us will pass. Let the memory of its bitterness be an
incentive to checking new animosities and keeping the future safe; but
in the present let us grasp and keep in our mind that the barrier that
sundered our nation must crumble, if only we have faith and persist,
undeterred by old bitter cries, for they are dying cries, undepressed by
millions apathetic, for it is the great recurring sign of the ideal,
that one hour its light will flash through quivering multitudes, and
millions will have vision and rouse to regenerate the land.
V
Happily, it is nothing new to plead for brotherhood among Irishmen now;
unhappily, it is not so generally admitted, nor even recognised, that
the same reason that exists for restoring friendly relations among
Irishmen, exists for the re-establishing of friendship with any
outsider--England or another--with whom now or in the future we may be
at war.
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