I venture to hope that...the Government will approach the question with a desire to deal in the most liberal manner they can with Ireland, and to giv… - James Bryce, 1st Viscount Bryce

[T]he learned had been at work in exploring the fields of history and philology. The origins of the several families of mankind were investigated and their affinities set forth. The old annals were edited and republished, the old poems popularised. The ancient exploits of the race were held up to admiration, and each people was supplied by historians and poets with fuel to feed the flame of national pride. It was all natural, and in one sense it was laudable. Men's souls are raised by the recollection of great deeds done by their forefathers. But the study of the past has its dangers when it makes men transfer past claims and past hatreds to the present. A sage friend remarked to me lately while we were discussing the complications of South-eastern Europe: "How much better if we could get rid of history altogether!" The learned men and the literary men, often themselves intoxicated by their own enthusiasms, never put their books to a worse use than when they filled each people with a conceit of its own super-eminent gifts and merits.

[Bryce] thought she [<nowiki/>Russia] was becoming a menace to Europe with her vast and rapidly increasing population and her also rapidly increasing prosperity. The Duma was no check on the ambitions of the official class. Germany, he thought, was right to arm and she would need every man.

When repeated experiments have failed, when every policy that has been proposed as a remedy for the ills of Ireland has been tried in succession and found wanting, is it not time to try some other experiment? I think the only experiment that can be tried is to make the Irish people masters of their own fortunes. Throw responsibility upon them, make them feel that it is to their interest to preserve law and order. Make them feel that the laws they are to obey are laws made by themselves, and that if they adopt a policy it will not be reversed by people sitting at Westminster, who have not that intimate knowledge of Irish conditions and wishes which can be possessed only by those who live in the midst of the people.