[41] The chief donors belong to the class of philanthropists who do not care to advertise their beneficence. I, therefore, respect their wishes and withhold their names. [42] I recall an occasion when the Vice-President of the I.A.O.S. (a Nationalist in politics and a Jesuit priest), who has been ever ready to lend a hand as volunteer organiser when the prior claims of his religious and educational duties allowed, found himself before an audience which he was informed, when he came to the meeting, consisted mainly of Orangemen. He began his address by referring to the new and somewhat strange environment into which he had drifted. He did not, however, see why this circumstance should lead to any misunderstanding between himself and his audience. He had never been able to understand what a battle fought upon a famous Irish river two centuries ago had got to do with the practical issues of to-day which he had come to discuss. The dispute in question was, after all, between a Scotchman and a Dutchman, and if it had not yet been decided, they might be left to settle it themselves--that is if too great a gulf did not separate them. CHAPTER VIII. THE RECESS COMMITTEE. The new movement, six years after its initiation, had succeeded beyond the most sanguine expectations of its promoters. All over the country the idea of self-help was taking firm hold of the imagination of the people. Co-operation had got, so to speak, into the air to such an extent that, whereas at the beginning, as I well remember, our chief difficulty had been to popularise a principle to which one section of the community was strongly opposed, and in which no section believed, it was now no longer necessary to explain or support the theory, but only to show how it could be advantageously applied to some branch of the farmer's industry. It was not, strange to say, the economic advantage which had chiefly appealed to the quick intelligence of the Irish farmer, but rather the novel sensation that he was thinking for himself, and that while improving his own condition he was working for others. This attitude was essential to the success of the movement, because had it not been for a vein of altruism, the "strong" farmers would have held aloof, and the small men would have been discouraged by the abstention of the better-off and presumably more enlightened of their class.