In the House of Commons on Wednesday Mr. Henderson moved
for an inquiry into reprisals in Ireland. He suggested that the Government had provoked the Sinn Feiners to shoot policemen in the back by the " military terrorism " instituted from 1917 onwards. Mr. Henderson had forgotten, perhaps, that we were then at war and that Germany had in Ireland many active allies whom our troops had to hold in check. We feel bound to say that such a speech, glossing over well-known facts, was unworthy of the leader of the Labour Party. How- ever, it gave Sir Hamar Greenwood an opportunity for telling the plain truth about the " reprisals," which, he said, were grossly misrepresented and often invented by the Sinn Fein propagandists. The Irish Nationalist Press, he stated, was intimidated by the terrorists. English journalists who had tried to discover and publish the facts had had their lives threatened, and had been compelled to leave Ireland. All this is well known to journalists, though not, it would seem, to Mr. Henderson and Mr. Asquith.
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