IRE-LAND
SIR,—I am deeply shocked at what I read regarding Ireland and Irish- men in your correspondence column of late. I am, Sir, an Irishman. But even in my native love of altercation would I have ignored Mr. Douglas Brown, and not, as did Mr. St. John Ervine, put my pen to paper to give vent to a greater, though opposed, piece of nonsense. Mr. Brown, Sir, is obviously a young man of limited vision and control. Mr. Ervine is supposed to be a man of wide vision and maturity of mind. Why, then, do I see such a letter in reply as I have before me? Mr. Ervine's reference to Eire as a " ramshackle and back-street republic " is a disgrace to his own mentality and to the pages of The Spectator ; his phrase concerning the "clap-trap . . . confined to the back-benches of the Dail " most unfortunate. I trust he has read the letters of Professor Savory and Senator Taylor. They held to figures, facts and manners. Mr. Ervine did not. His sarcasm is poorly placed. " Were they, indeed? " he says of Mr. Brown's claim that Montgomery, Dill et cie were Irishmen. I need quote no more. The letter stands as a monument to the writer's taste.
We are only too aware that there is a border cutting Ireland in two. There will always be a border as long as religious differences and intolerance and national politics exist in Ireland. But hair-splitting in the matter raised as to whether or not an Ulsterman is an Irishman is out of place and, indeed, ridiculous. I was born and bred in Belfast, and am proud to call myself an Irishman. North? South? Ireland covers both. Mr. Ervine's letter contains a remark arising out of Mr. Sheehy Skeffington's letter on the state of Dublin's proletariat. Mr. Ervine, with his long association with Ulster, will doubtless remember Bally- macarrat. Are Dublin's proletariat really any worse than those of Belfast? Has Belfast done more than Dublin for its slums? I think not. Dublin's fair city, with its intangible je ne sais quoi remarked upon by Mr. Brown, is paradise enow for any Belfast man. Mr. Brown's letter was what might have been expected of a cortege historical society. Could it not have been left at that? Was it necessary to show such bad manners so unnecessarily?—Yours truly, J. KANE ARCHER.
Bertha House, Malone Road, Belfast.
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