Sta,—The letter of Mr. Douglas Brown, of Dublin, in The
Spectator of July 18th, calls for two comments. (1) A casual reader of his letter might assume (quite wrongly) that all the Field-Marshals he mentioned belong to Eire. May I therefore point out that Montgomery's family links are with Londonderry, the second city in Ulster ; that Alexander comes from Caledon, in County Tyrone ; that Alanbrooke (omitted from Mr. Brown's list) is one of the fighting Brookes of County Fermanagh, and that Dill was born in Lurgan, County Armagh. Northern Ireland is proud of these great war leaders. (2) Mr. Brown claims that during the World War Eire provided the British Forces with " over a quarter of a million first-class soldiers." Nonsense. The figure given in the House of Commons on March 26th, 1946 (see Hansard), was 43,249, covering the Army, Navy and Air Force. A slight difference between that figure and 250,000. Mr. Brown seems to be one of those persons who are incurably careless about " those damned noughts."— Yours, &c., H. TAYLOR
(Senator, Parliament of Northern Ireland). zo5 Ballygomartin Road, Belfast, Northern Ireland.
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