Rite and Reason: In a famous broadcast 60 years ago today, then Taoiseach Éamon de Valera spoke of his vision for a "noble" Ireland. It marked the 50th anniversary of the Gaelic League. He began in Irish then continued:
Before the present war began, I was accustomed on St Patrick's Day to speak to our kinsfolk in foreign lands, particularly those in the United States, and to tell them year by year of the progress being made towards building up the Ireland of their dreams and ours - the Ireland that we believe is destined to play, by its example and its inspiration, a great part as a nation among the nations.
Acutely conscious though we all are of the misery and desolation in which the greater part of the world is plunged, let us turn aside for a moment to that ideal Ireland that we would have.
That Ireland which we dreamed of would be the home of a people who valued material wealth only as a basis of right living, of a people who were satisfied with frugal comfort and devoted their leisure to the things of the spirit - a land whose countryside would be bright with cosy homesteads, whose fields and villages would be joyous with the sounds of industry, with the romping of sturdy children, the contests of athletic youths and the laughter of comely maidens, whose firesides would be forums for the wisdom of serene old age.
It would, in a word, be the home of a people living the life that God desires that man should live.
With the tidings that make such an Ireland possible, St Patrick came to our ancestors 1,500 years ago, promising happiness here as well as happiness hereafter. It was the pursuit of such an Ireland that later made our country worthy to be called the Island of Saints and Scholars.
It was the idea of such an Ireland, happy, vigorous, spiritual, that fired the imaginations of our poets, that made successive generations of patriotic men give their lives to win religious and political liberty and that will urge men in our own and future generations to die, if need be, so that these liberties may be preserved.
One hundred years ago the Young Irelanders, by holding up the vision of such an Ireland before the people, inspired our nation and moved it spiritually as it had hardly been moved since the golden age of Irish civilisation.
Fifty years after the Young Irelanders, the founders of the Gaelic League similarly inspired and moved the people of their day, as did later the leaders of the Volunteers. We of this time, if we have the will and the active enthusiasm, have the opportunity to inspire and move our generation in like manner.
We can do so by keeping this thought of a noble future for our country constantly before our minds, ever seeking in action to bring that future into being and ever remembering that it is to our nation as a whole that future must apply.
Thomas Davis, laying down the national programme for his generation, spoke first of the development of our material resources as he saw them, of the wealth that lay in our harbours, our rivers, our bogs and our mines. Characteristically, however, he passed on to emphasise the still more important development of the resources of the spirit:
"Our young artisans must be familiar with the arts of design and the natural sciences connected with their trade; and so of our farmers; and both should, beside, have that general information which refines and expands the mind, that knowledge of Irish history and statistics that makes it national and those accomplishments and sports which make leisure profitable and home joyous. Our cities must be stately with sculpture, pictures and buildings, and our fields glorious with peaceful abundance.
"But this is utopia!" he exclaimed, but then questioned, "Is it?" He answered: "No; but the practicable (that is, the attainable) object of those who know our resources. To seek it is the solemn, unavoidable duty of every Irishman."
Davis's answer should be our answer also. We are aware that Davis was mistaken in the extent of some of the material resources which he catalogued, but we know, nonetheless, that our material resources are sufficient for a population much larger than we have at present, if we consider their use with a due appreciation of their value in a right philosophy of life. And we know also that the spiritual resources which Davis asked the nation to cultivate are inexhaustible.
For many the pursuit of the material is a necessity. Man, to express himself fully and to make the best use of the talents God has given him, needs a certain minimum of comfort and leisure.
A section of our people have not yet this minimum. They rightly strive to secure it and it must be our aim and the aim of all who are just and wise to assist in the effort. But many have got more than is required and are free, if they choose, to devote themselves more completely to cultivating the things of the mind and in particular,those which mark us out as a distinct nation.
The first of these is the national language. It is for us what no other language can be. It is our very own. It is more than a symbol; it is an essential part of our nationhood.
It has been moulded by the thought of a hundred generations of our forebears. In it is stored the accumulated experience of a people, our people who, even before Christianity was brought to them, were already cultured and living in a well-ordered society.
The Irish language spoken in Ireland today is the direct descendant without break of the language our ancestors spoke in those far-off days.
As a vehicle of 3,000 years of our history, the language is for us precious beyond measure. As the bearer to us of a philosophy, of an outlook on life deeply Christian and rich in practical wisdom, the language today is worth far too much to dream of letting it go.
To part with it would be to abandon a great part of ourselves, to lose the key to our past, to cut away the roots from the tree. With the language gone we could never aspire again to being more than half a nation.
(For space reasons the remaining third of the broadcast is not being printed here. It fleshed out his arguments for preserving Irish and how this might be done.)