HISTORY WITH A PURPOSE
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—In my review of Mr. Ramsay Muir's Brief History of Our Own Times I stated that he was guilty of five serious errors and one technical inexactitude, in a single page dealing with the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921. There is nothing in Mr. Muir's letter to induce me to withdraw or qualify that statement.
Of course, I accept his assertion that he never intended to represent Arthur Griffith as a guerilla leader, but no one reading the passage as it stands in Mr.' Muir's book (and not as ingeniously " abridged " in his letter) could fail to read it as I did.
Of the other five mistakes Mr. Muir completely passes over three, and attempts to explain away the remaining two by accusing me of distorting his intention. In each of these latter cases, however, he manages to repeat his original mistake. I can only conclude, therefore, that he is still ignorant of the facts. These are : 1. Collins and Griffith never visited Lloyd George in Scotland. There were no Anglo-Irish " talks "- at Gairloch. It was simply Lloyd George's headquarters during part of his correspondence with De Valera. - • 2. The Treaty provides for submisSion " to a meeting summoned for the purpose of the members elected to sit in the House of Commons of Southern Ireland," and, if approved by that body, for ratification by "the necessary legislation," but does not refer to Dail Eireann, which was not officially recognized by the British for those purposes. This is the technical inexactitude of which I spoke.
Mr. Muir is distressed that I did not deal with the first 170 pages of his Brief History of Our Times, and unless I am greatly mistaken implies that I do not know those pages as well as I ought. As a matter of fact, I know those pages very well indeed, having previously studied them in the second volume of Mr. Muir's Short History of the British Common- wealth, first published in 1922, from which they appear to be reproduced without substantial change.—Yours faith- fully, Singletree, Rose Hill, Oxford. FRANK PAKENUAM.
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