20 SEPTEMBER 1919, Page 12

SINN FEIN IN AMERICA.

[To THE EDITOR of THE ". SPECTATOR."] .

SIR ,—The Times correspondent in Washington reports—Times of September 15th—as follows: " Mr. de Valera. has had a fine reception in places like .Boston, New York, Chicago. He has been acclaimed everywhere by the serried ranks of the Irish. He has probably collected large sums, though it is impossible to get details of the amount or the method of expenditure." There are not many "places like " the three cities named in respect of the Irish-American population contained in them. In the Southern States there are none. Perhaps there is a slight resemblance in Philadelphia, Buffalo, Detroit, Cleveland, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Kansas City, Omaha, and (perhaps) San Francisco. Whether or not Mr. de Valera has visited all or any of these cities does not appear.- -- • Persons who are interested in the work of making estimates may judge of the amount " probably collected "-by him from the fact that in a New England city with a population of about thirty thousand (about one-half of which is Irish-American, with an Irish-American Mayor)the sum of $11,000 was subscribed at a public meeting (about £2,600 at the present rate of exchange), as pliblished in the local daily newspapers, which gave the names of the donors (all Irish). The population of the three cities named by the correspondent is very large—New York over three millions, Chicago over two millions, Boston about a million—and the proportion of Irish-Americans in each is not very different from that of the New England city I have mentioned. The views expressed by Mr. George L. Fox in your issue of September 6th, 1919 (pp. 302-303) are, I think, those which are entertained by a large majority of native,

" unhyphenated " Americans.—I am, Sir, &c., S. R. H..