The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1919-12-16
DR. ALEX IRVINE
 ANALYzES THE
 MIND OF ULSTER
Former New Havener Tells of Mental Transformation on Leaving This Province of Ireland.

That the mind of the people of Ulster is vastly different from that of the other three pSevinces of Ire land is explained / in an article quoted from the Northern Echo, a great organ of public opinion in the north of England, from the pen of Dr. Alexander Irvine. Dr. Irvine is we'll known in New Haven. Some years ago he was a minister in Fair Haven, East, and afterwards went to New York where he was engaged in uplift work. He is an author of some repute.
 pr. Irvines article, which is largely autobiographicaI, tells of his birth and early life in the north Irish province; how zeal for Eng land is a devouring element in the Ulster soul and how he did not become an intelligent thinking hu- man being until he got out of it and saw what was being thought and done in the rest of the world. The following extracts from the article tell vividly of his mental transfor- nation:
 T was born and brought up in hopeless poverty he writes, ''but 1t never occurred to me" CuntiI he was 25 years of age and left UI- ster, that there might be even re- motely any connection between poverty and politics. Wealth and poverty, to me, were the arrange ments of God, and were never questioned
 T can think of no greater para dox in my rather paradoxica1 career than the fact that with scarcely enough clothing on me to dust a violin, I was shouting for Queen and Constitution Living on the edge of paupertsm all my youth, my supreme earthly concern was the Protestant succession on the throne of England, something apparently of no concern to the youth of England, but of first and primary importance to the youth of Ulster.
 "stupidIy ignorant of history, I was acquainted with one date, one fact. The year 1890 was the most sacred of all dates, and the 12th
 of July the most holy of all holy
 days. On that date the world was saved from Popery. I was sure Of that had the Ulster mind Tn common with my kind, I was possessed with an impIacable hatred of the Roman Catholic religion. I feared, as I feared nothing else, it's spread or progress. My dearest
 chUm was a Catholic boy, but I could never fully trust him. H. probably felt. the same about me. Distrust between the sects was quite the normal thing
 When the Ulster mind leaves Ulster something similar happens to ; it.
 ''Whatever of art, or poetry. or literature is produced in Ireland | emanates from Dublin-Belfast pro- ! duces business, and business only, i The Celtic Irish mind cannot live , on spindIes. The Ulster mind ap-
 parentIy can.
 i ''The former lives on the past. the 1 latter is eternalIy, projecting itself 1 into the future. One is a Helot mind, the other is the mind of a rebel. As an utterly distnterested 1 spectator, look upon the Irish 1 question as problem in psychol- 1 ogy - problem of the human mind If Ulster was a political province l in the ordinary sense of the word. the solution would be easy. Ulster is a state of mind, and political action hardly touches the situation. The democratic ideal overspreading the world in the 2Oth century is unknown-or nearly un- known - in Ulster. Not until it 1 reaches Belfast is there much hone 1 for Ireland''