THE SOUTHERN IRISH LOYALISTS.
(To THE EDITOR or THE " SPECTATOR.") ,—I have read with the greatest interest your plea for the Southern loyalists, that they should be enabled to leave Ireland ?ether than live under a Sinn Fein Government. Speaking as me of their number, I do not think that anyone who has not bad personal experience of Ireland during the past two years can have any conception as to what the future of loyalists would be under the rule of Sinn Fein. I do not refer to the case of the Irish landed gentry. Most of us have little left in Ireland to lose, and we can try the experiment of living there under the new conditions, knowing that we can leave when we like without danger of financial loss. All that most of us possess in Ireland now are our demesnes, which in the majority of cases we have already sold to the Government, and having received the purchase money, we are allowed to occupy them on the payment of a small terminable annuity as permitted under the Land Act of 1903. If we decide to leave Ireland we do not suffer financially, as we could hardly expect to receive payment a second time.
Those who deserve sympathy are the loyalists of the business and professional classes, the shopkeepers, the farmers, and the ex-soldiers. Their sole means of existence are in Ireland, and experience of the most bitter kind makes it certain that they will be unable to remain. If they go, they will not be permitted to take anything with them, and they will be faced with starva- tion. You, Sir, are among the few Englishmen who realize this, and I most earnestly hope that even although it may prove a costly undertaking you will use the great influence of the Spectator to ensure that something may be done to enable those who have been loyal to the Empire to start life again elsewhere. Were I to publish my name at the foot of this letter, those whom I employ would be in the gravest danger, and I therefore
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