Lord Haldane recently commented on the stimulating and beneficial effects of such an admixture of races as is at present taking place in Scotland, and especially on Clydeside. There has been a tremendous “pother” about the “Irish Invasion” in certain quarters. We are told by some Protestant leaders that Scottish nationalism is in danger. This is a new-found zeal for nationalism, however, obviously dictated by emptying churches. These gentlemen represent the very factors which have been mainly responsible for the desuetude of Scottish nationalism. Their anti-Irish propaganda has been of the most unscrupulous character and depends for its principal effects on the use of the terms “Irish” and “Catholic” as synonymous. But, large as the Irish influx has been, the recent rapid development of which throws an adequate light on the real motives of the protesters, representing as they do churches which are about to achieve Union, really a prelude to the inevitable re-union of the Protestant Churches and Rome, through the indifference instead of the enthusiasm of their remaining members and without consultation of the Scottish people, _via_ a Parliament systematically anti-Scottish in its policies. From the Renaissance point of view the growth of Catholicism, and the influx of the Irish, are alike welcome, as undoing those accompaniments of the Reformation which have lain like a blight on Scottish arts and affairs. In this connection it is useful to remember that the Shorter Catechism, like the concept of the Canny Scot, the myth which has facilitated the anglicization of Scotland, was an English invention. The revival of Catholicism means the restoration of the atmosphere in which Scottish arts and letters flourished in a fashion they have far from paralleled at any time since the Reformation. I am not contending that Protestantism is essentially antagonistic to arts and letters. That would be absurd. But Scottish Calvinism has been: and just as many of the great figures in the Irish literary movement have been Protestants, so, on the other hand, if there is to be cultural progress in Scotland, must many of the emerging artists be Catholics.