A Song of the Open Road and Other Verses

INTRODUCTION

Though I have now known my friend Louis McQuilland for well over a dozen years I am only just beginning to understand him. It may be that he is only just beginning to understand himself. But I am not so sure; for he is an Irishman, and the Irish have, as compared with us, a remarkable capacity both for knowing themselves and for keeping to themselves what they know.

For what it is worth, my own interpretation of the earlier and the later McQuilland—they afford in some ways a startling contrast—is something like this. I conceive a young man, an Ulsterman of the Catholic Nationalist minority, the fiercest section of the Fighting Race, coming to London and finding himself among an alien people whose eyes were so different from his own, and, with the quick observation and adaptability of his people, saying to himself, “I must not talk about my country; for that is treason. I must not talk about my religion; for that is mediæval bigotry. Let us talk about Art.”

It is fair to Mr. McQuilland to say that he not only talked about Art but produced it. How well he did the sort of work that English poets were then trying to do, you may see in many poems of this volume, in “The House of the Strange Woman,” for instance. But even in playing with the Decadence there was always a sharp Irish edge to his execution. Read, for example, the little poem called “Fleet Street.” It is a novel of George Gissing’s in twelve lines. To the

{10}

 same period, though to a different mood, belongs, I think, the really very beautiful poem called “The Joyous Comrade.”

Nevertheless, when one turns to the poetry of a later date, and especially to the several poems evoked by the present war, there is a change in the very movement of the times which no one can miss. In spite of bitter blunders on both sides—but especially on our side—I cannot help feeling in that change a good omen for the future friendship of our two countries. For a common crusade in defence of that by which all Europeans live, if it has affected nothing else, has, I think, made Louis McQuilland feel that he can give himself away ever so little to the English. Even a little of him is an acceptable gift.

Among these later poems there is one which every Englishman ought to read in these times. It is called “The Song of the Flag.” It is a song of Internationalism by a Nationalist; and it may serve to emphasize the much needed truth that friendship between nations, no less than enmity, depends upon every nation remaining strictly individual and separate. Two strong men shaking hands, perhaps after good blows given and taken, is a fine sight. Briareus promiscuously shaking hands with himself—the Modern idea of Internationalism—is not.

CECIL CHESTERTON.