26 FEBRUARY 1972, Page 7

Lending aid

The voice of moderation is far from still in the Republic of Ireland. Some people there find it possible to combine the anger and outrage they feel at the Londonderry shootings — whether or not that anger and outrage is justified — with a civilised determination to resist the temptations of anarchy in their own country. In the excellent weekly Dublin newsmagazine This Week Eavan Boland, the brilliant young Irish poet (and daughter, incidentally, of a former President of the UN General Assembly), writes: The burning of the British Embassy was simply arson and degraded a day of mourning. A gelignite bomb thrown at the home of a man in his seventies in Oughterard was intimidation. The refusal to import British newspapers, unload British planes, lack the dignity of sanctions, and must be seen as censorship.

Above all what was eroded in such behaviour on the day of mourning was the force of our nation's protest against the Derry killings.