eyes, until this ignoble crew declared alcohol to be the only possible basis of Irish nationality. In the remote past we find the national instincts of our people fully manifested. We find in this early literature a love for the truth-teller and for the hero. Indeed they did not choose as chieftains of their clans men whom the bards could not sing. They reverenced wisdom, whether in king, bard, or ollav, and at the same time there was a communal basis for economic life. This heroic literature is, as our Standish O'Grady declared, rather prophecy than history. It reveals what the highest spirits deemed the highest, and what was said lay so close to the heart of the race that it is still remembered and read. That literature discloses the character of the national being, still to be manifested in a civilization, and it must flame out before the tale which began among the gods is closed. Whatever brings this communal character into our social order, and at the same time desires the independent aristocratic intellect, is in accord with the national tradition. The co-operative movement is the modern expression of that mood. It is already making a conquest of the Irish mind, and in its application to life predisposing our people to respect for the man of special attainments, independent character, and intellect. A social order which has made its economics democratic in character needs such men above all things. It needs aristocratic thinkers to save the social order from stagnation, the disease which eats into all harmonious life. We shall succeed or fail in Ireland as we succeed or fail to make democracy prevail in our economic life, and aristocratic ideals to prevail in our political and intellectual life. In all things it is best for a people to obey the law of their own being. The lion can never become the ox, and "one law for the lion and the ox is oppression."