SINN FEIN AND PROTESTANTISM. [To THE EDITOR or THIS "
Sezerrroa."1 Stn.,—In your leading article on North-East Ireland of June 4th you say :—
" One would have naturally supposed that the cruelties practised upon the Protestants of the South and West by their Roman Catholic neighbours (almost all the victims of the Simi Feiners have been Protestants) would have led to the wild justice or rather injustice of revenge in Protestant Ulster."
This statement wants qualifying, for many of the Royal Irish Constabulary who have been killed by the Sinn Feiners were members of the Roman Church. The trouble in Ireland is racial, not religious. This is borne out by the following quotations from the current number of the Round Table
(p. 497) :— " To conceive the struggle as religious in character is in any case misleading. Protestants in the South do not complain of persecution on sectarian grounds. If Protestant farmers are murdered it is not by reason of their religion, but rather because they are under suspicion as loyalists. The distinction is fine but a real one."
The Southern Irishman—and I speak with some knowledge of the subject—is singularly devoid of religious bigotry.—I am,
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