THE " ROUND TABLE" AND IRELAND.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."]
,SIR, In your article on the above in your issue of June 3rd you point out a movement to the left in home politics, and refer especially to the unfairness towards Ulster which is dis- played and to the vague advice to the people of Ulster that they must make a "difficult sacrifice" for the sake of the " Treaty." At the same time you speak of the Round Table as being " well informed" on the leading political questions of the day. Will you let me say that in relation to Ireland it is not " well informed"? The information about Ireland in the Round Table is seldom more than a rechauffe of cold scraps from a well-known Dublin table. Last summer there appeared an elaborate article on Ireland demanding a "final" settle- ment of the Irish question and anticipating an arrangement very like the agreements of the " Treaty "—suspiciously like. The word "final" in relation to Ireland always strikes a thoughtful Irishman as slightly comic. But, apart from this, the whole article was full of misleading statements. It was certainly not " well informed." It omitted important factors from its general account of the Irish situation. It repeated stale misrepresentations, which no one who really knows
Ireland can believe. An instance of the former was the omission of all mention of Mr. Birrell's repeal of the Arms' Act. Everyone in Ireland knows that, from the moment of that repeal, the whole country began to fill up with firearms. The arming of Ulster was the inevitable consequence. As an instance of the second kind of misleading statements, the Round Table solemnly informed its readers that the South of Ireland is an agricultural country and the North of Ireland an industrial country, and therefore Ulster must always be dependent on the South. As a matter of fact, the Ulster counties form the only really agricultural part of Ireland. The South is, on the whole„ a grazing farm for cattle for the English market. The South of Ireland does not even grow enough potatoes to supply its own needs. These are illustra- tions of the kind of inaccuracies which the Round Table serves up, with an air of owl-like wisdom, for the consumption
of unsuspecting Englishmen.—I am, Sir, &c., ULSTERMAN.
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