3 MAY 1919, Page 12

THE LIBRARY OF LOUVAIN.

[To THE EDITOR or THE " SPECTATOR."] the subject of Sir Alfred Hopkinson's letter of appeal for the Library of Louvain, may I call the attention of the Sinn Feiners to the fact •that it was their German allies who made a bonfire there of the most valuable collection of. Irish manuscripts then extant? The collegiate authorities of Louvain

had in their day been the most determined opponents of Luther and phis teaching, the Bull " Exurge" which condemned Luther and all his works being the production of the Doctors of Lou- vain whom Luther assailed as imps of hell. It was a strange coincidence that the destroyers of Louvain and its library should have been nominally chiefly Lutheran soldiers, and it may form an object-lesson of the value to the Sinn Feiners of their German alliance and sympathies.—I am, Sir, Ac.,

WHIMS.