BLACK RECORD" SIR, —Your references to this country are generally so
reasonable and well informed that I hardly like to cavil at a small point in "A Spec- tator's Notebook" in your issue of March 28th. The writer states that the circulation of Sir R. Vansittart's Black Record is prohibited in Eire, and describes this as an example of "timorousness."
Personally, I had no difficulty in obtaining a copy of this book through a Dublin -bookseller when it first came out, though quite possibly it has been prohibited since then. The Government of this country, having resolved, for reasons which need not be discussed, to remain neutral during the present war, has decided that the local Press and the publications allowed to be sold must observe a certain degree of impartiality and not contain matter too obviously of the nature of propaganda. This seems to me a wise decision, and I see nothing " timorous " in it. To quote only one possibility, would you or the British Government have liked to see Eire flooded with German propaganda, paid for with German money and with, no doubt, frequent references to both remote and recent Anglo-Irish history?
I beg to enclose my card and to add that I write as an ex-Unionist and one in full agreement with most of what Sir R. Vansittart has to say about Germany and the Germans.—Yours, &c., LEINSTERMAN.
Ireland. -
Previous page
