REPRISALS.
[To THE Enrroa or THE " SPECTATOR."' SIR,—I regret to say that " Englishman," writing in the Spectator of May 7th,_ is quite wrong. There are, unfortu- nately, authorized military reprisals. Some were carried out a few days ago. I am an old Unionist. I have always con- demned all such reprisals. Some excuses may be made for those eases when a few soldiers .or. Black-and-Tans, maddened by the appalling fate of their comrades, have " run amok,"
burning the homes of Sinn Feiners, but inflicting perhaps as much injury on the innocent as on the guilty. Some of these disorderly proceedings might, I believe, have been prevented. The official military reprisals,. I hold; are entirely wrong, though I have found that many people did not agree with me. I am told they have done good, and this may be true in a few instances, but the good is only local and temporary. Serious harm has been done—moral, material, and lasting. The men- dacious historian of the future will no doubt class our excel- lent Tommies and the splendid R.I.C. and the burnings of 1921 with the Yeomanry and pitch-caps of 1798. Here is an instance of authorized reprisals: (1) Policemen are murdered. (2) The house from which shots were fired is burnt by the military (value, perhaps, £600). (3) Three houses of loyalists are burnt (value, say, £150,000) " on account of the military reprisals in the district." (4) Six houses of reputed Sinn Feiners are burnt by the military. (5) Threats from the Sinn Feiners to burn more loyalist houses. (6) A proclamation by the military authority that in future for one loyalist's house burnt three Sinn Fein houses will be destroyed. What is the end to be? As long as the present methods of the I.R.A. on one side and reprisals on the other continue, men can only "create a solitude and call it peace."—I am, Sir, &c., Longueville, Mallow, Co. Cork. B. E. LONGFIELD, J.P., D.L.
Previous page
