You see those young Irishmen there, struggling like pigs at a trough to get their fill of German beer.That signifies a conquest of Teuton over Kelt more important and far-reaching in its results than the landing of Hengist and Horsa.
The Kelt has come to grief heretofore--or at least been forced to play second fiddle to other races--because he lacked the right sort of a drink.He has in his blood an excess of impulsive, imaginative, even fantastic qualities.
It is much easier for him to make a fool of himself, to begin with, than it is for people of slower wits and more sluggish temperaments.When you add whiskey to that, or that essence of melancholia which in Ireland they call 'porther,' you get the Kelt at his very weakest and worst.
These young men down there are changing all that.
They have discovered lager.Already many of them can outdrink the Germans at their own beverage.
The lager-drinking Irishman in a few generations will be a new type of humanity--the Kelt at his best.
He will dominate America.He will be THE American.
And his church--with the Italian element thrown clean out of it, and its Pope living, say, in Baltimore or Georgetown--will be the Church of America."
"Let us have some more lager at once," put in Celia.
"This revolution can't be hurried forward too rapidly."Theron could not feel sure how much of the priest's discourse was in jest, how much in earnest."It seems to me,"he said, "that as things are going, it doesn't look much as if the America of the future will trouble itself about any kind of a church.The march of science must very soon produce a universal scepticism.It is in the nature of human progress.What all intelligent men recognize today, the masses must surely come to see in time."Father Forbes laughed outright this time."My dear Mr.Ware," he said, as they touched glasses again, and sipped the fresh beer that had been brought them, "of all our fictions there is none so utterly baseless and empty as this idea that humanity progresses.