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Although when the Gaelic League was started I did all in my power to make and keep it non-political, yet I thought all along that a time would one day come when it would itself take part in politics. However after running it some years upon non-political lines it got to be so firmly established on a non-political basis that, for some years at least, I doubt if it would have been in anyone's power to have switched it on to politics. I remember saying that it just showed the power of repetition and suggestion, for even those people who would gladly have dragged it into politics looked upon its non-political constitution as something inevitable, and even something
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to be respected, something at any rate that it was no use trying to change. This was the case for 12 or 15 years or more.
By keeping the League strictly and sternly non-political we drew into it, or rather we earned the good will and kind words of such different people as Forde of the Irish World, Devoy of the Irish American, Cardinal Logue and Horace Plunkett. Horace Plunketts kind words of appreciation were worth any money to the League, though few people recognized this, for with his support and the unanimity of every one else it became impossible for the Irish Government to send out the "hard word" to the Intermediate & Nat'l Boards
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and to kill off the language so far as it would be killed by rules and regulations, as I have no doubt at all that it would have done from the very first if it had [turned?] the least tendency towards anti-English politics. I feel quite satisfied in my own mind that the rigid non-political attitude was the one thing that saved the League during the first dozen years for everyone had a good word to say of it and nobody spoke against it. The members of Parliament alone, or at least a considerable number of them, were always suspicious of the movement, but a few like John Boland and Stephen Gwynn took it up warmly, and this was sufficient to neutralise any furtive hostility on the part of the rest.
At an early period I had to tackle the
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the whole question, because Patrick Forde of the Irish World challenged me upon it in a private letter and wanted to know why I did not take up politics & make the League an adjunct to the Irish Parliamentary party - My answer was perhaps the best paper I ever wrote. I showed how the bulk of the branches were run by officers & secretaries who were largely either National Teachers or Customs and Excise officers, how these men were precluded by rigid rules from taking part in anything pol-itical, how many of them were full of national feeling of the best type but could find no outlet for it. How we provided an outlet and let loose a lot of energy for the good of Ireland
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which would otherwise have been lost. I said a great deal more and so effectually that I had no further trouble in that quarter, and Forde raised £300 in his paper for us the League, at a time when even that small sum meant everything to us. I was very proud of my letter to Forde and carefully kept a copy but on looking it up the other day I found the mice had eaten it, and it alone out of a number of papers in a drawer into which they had bored a hole. This I regretted for the matter had far reaching consequences, for having won Forde over there was no possibility of the Members of Parliament turning upon us and rending us, or at least of their openly dis-paraging us, once their own chief American