Vol. 2 No. 1 - Modernist Magazines Project

THE EDITOR 12
about tradition, but, in the end, it is surely what we have
done with it that tests it and us ?
That was, I believe, what Pearse himself had in mind
when he grew weary of the disputations of the Traditionalists
and said : * Our love of disputation sometimes makes
us indecent as when we argue over a dead man's coffin
as to whether he was a Nationalist or not ; and sometimes
makes us ridiculous as when we prove by a mathematical
formula that the poet who has most finely voiced Irish
nationalism in our day is no Nationalist/ (Here he must
be referring either to Synge or to Yeats.) ' As if a man's
opinions were more important than his work 1 I propose
that we take service as our touchstone, and reject all other
touchstones/
Finally as to who can dare to try to say what is, or
is not, * service '—there will always come the tug-o'-war.
It is inevitable and it is a fine inevitability. It is the stir
of life in a people. It is where the test of leadership
comes in. It is where men group together to sort out
what is dead and withered in tradition from what is alive
and full of seed. That is, perhaps, the whole point of the
thing—that Life does not seem to be able to do without
help, and demands intelligence. Have we not seen it
happen ? Whenever something backward and exhausted
gathers to itself an assortment of men to serve its reactionary
purposes we may be sure that it will always reach back
for the oldest and deadest traditions to make out of them
a crusader's banner. And then, Flash!—as in 1916, and
we may hope and believe, as in 1941, and as in every
generation—genius will kindle somewhere and the Traditionalists
will roar and wave the poor old battered flag,
and the fight is on again. It is on, to-day.