SIR,—Many of your , readers• who had not followed previous accounts
of the Conspiracy Trial at Edinburgh will have been confused by Sir Compton Mackenzie's Sidelight on the subject in your issue of 11th Decetfiber. Perhaps a little background information would help to keep the thing in perspective.
Sir Compton is, of course, a genial romantic who has made a nice living from a seam of mental fantasy which he has quar- ried zealously for many years. He is a great one for the stories. Och, and I can imagine back in 1924 there would be may long nights when he and Tim Healy must have been at '.the poteen, and there would be the great talk of him and Tim, and Tim tellin' him, and him tellin' Tim, and before he could count a quarter bf a century he wouldn't know whether he was standing on his ear in Tim Healy's garden or sitting in the High Court in Edinburgh listening to a Conspiracy Trial.
It is a great gift the fantasy, but a wicked thing to mix with court reporting. " A large majority of public opinion throughout Scot- land " and elsewhere would get a very unreliable and indeed blatantly untruthful summary of the facts if they read only the romantic, reporter.
It may have been, however, that Sir Compton's tartan-coloured spectacles were troubling him again, and that he did not hear much of the evidence very well. These spectacles must be an awful strain on the eyes every now and again, and they do not do Scotland much good either.—.Yours faith- fully, JOHN K It R 8 Hartington Gardens, Edinburgh, 10
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