Here are some figures:-- Area Population Revenue (thousands of (Millions) (Millions £) sq. miles) Ireland 32-1/2 4-1/3 30 Belgium 11-1/2 7-1/2 32 Holland 12-1/2 6-1/2 18-3/4 Denmark 15-1/2 2-3/4 7-1/2 Norway 125 2-1/2 10 Switzerland 16 4 3 Rumania 53-1/2 7-1/2 24 Serbia 34 4-1/2 8-1/2 Finland 126 3-1/4 8-1/2 These figures would suggest that Ireland is a strong military and naval power among the small nations. And so we are--only the army and navy we support are not our own; they exist to keep us in slavery, not in freedom. It is about time we started business on our own. =DEPENDENT ON ENGLAND?= The most significant instance of English policy in Ireland is the creation of the widespread delusion that we are economically dependent on England. An elaborate network of fraud and deceit has been built up to hide the truth from our eyes. We are secretly and systematically robbed and we hardly notice it. The ordinary Irish worker pays at least four shillings a week to England, he is hardly aware of the fact, so nicely is it done whenever he buys tobacco or his wife gets tea and sugar, and so on. Though the average income in England is three times what it is in Ireland, the notoriously underfed Irish workers have to pay more than twice the English proportion of indirect taxes on food, etc. We pay England 1/- on every pound of tea, 1-1/2d. on every pound of sugar, 7d. on every oz. of tobacco. There is no fuss about it: it is accepted as part of the laws of nature that tea should be a shilling a pound dearer than it need be. As for direct taxation--well, even the farmers know what the English income-tax is. Where does it all go? To England as taxes, profits, rents, imperial contributions, and trade. As a going concern Ireland is now worth thirty million a year to its owner, John Bull. There are certain expenses of administration--police, Castle, secret service, prisons, tax collectors--and there are, of course, several items of hush-money, dodges necessary to fool the people, such as "education." But the fact is that a bigger and bigger profit is being made every year out of this island. More agricultural materials and products are shipped to England, more Irish brains are selected for running India, etc., more Irishmen are utilised for gun-fodder. Sometimes, after much beseeching by resolutions and deputations, we are graciously presented with a minute fraction of our own goods. Is it not about time that we recognised in English "grants" our own country's transmuted plunder? We are as dependent on England as a factory is on an absentee society lady who is shareholder.