[To THE EDITOR OP THZ " SPECTATOR.") SIR,—Professor Henry's letter
reminds me of a meeting I once attended in South Africa, where Irish propagandists told a horrible tale of .British rule in Ireland. The Boers were im- pressed, but before they swallowed the story some of them asked me whether it was true. I replied that it was true, but that most of it dated back to times when the Boers themselves were exterminating the wild Bushmen, to the period when the man who stole a sheep was hanged, and when throughout the world there was less tolerance and humanity than we have since learned. I told them, too, that since then the British people had paid a heavy bill to buy out the Irish landlords on behalf of the Irish peasants; that in Ireland there was no racial or religious distinction except what the people made for themselves; and that under the law the people were exactly as in England, except for the land laws, in which they were more highly favoured.
The level-headed Dutchmen began to wonder what the Irish- men had been grousing about. They, too, had old tales, espe- cially one about some rebellious Boers who, after the scaffold had broken under them, had been hanged again. But though this and other stories are told in Boer households, they are told as old tales, as the French might tell of Joan of Arc, or the Welsh of the Rebecca riots, as having no application to the questions of to-day. Whatever dead men did in 1833 or pre- viously cannot be attributed to the men of to-day, and when, in their foreign propaganda, the anti-British Irish revive these old tales as though they were things of yesterday, our Govern- ment or some other body should see that they are properly dated. There were faults on both sides in the old days, but there is no need to dwell upon that. That there have 'been but few faults on our side in the present generation is proved by the fact that the anti-British Irish propagandist has to rake up ancient history for grievances against us.—I am, Sir, &c.,
JENEIN JENKINS.
Gelly, Gymmer (Port Talbot), Glamorgan.
P.S.—Your correspondent refers to the " hate " of the Irish in '33 and thereabouts. True, judging by the literature of those days, the Irishman was not popular with our ancestors. But in recent times we have more than made up for it. Oscar Wilde, Bernard Shaw and other Irishmen could sneer and jeer at us to their hearts' content, and we grovelled at their feet and asked for more. And even " Easter Week " made no difference to a popular Irish play that was running at the time.—J. J.
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