In these circumstances it is indispensable that there should be
a tremendously strong feeling about the incomparable Wickedness of murder. Sympathy with the murderer is a lack of sympathy with the unprotected, the weak, and the innocent. We view with dismay any slackening in a sound public sense of the subject of murder. We are grieved to have to say that Ire believe that events in Ireland have brought about such a slackening. Murder in Ireland has become, as it were, such a matter of course that people regard it with much more indiffer- enee than formerly, and in all political arguments about Ireland quite forget the full horror and indignation they ought to fool. It need not and cannot be denied that there have been undisci- plined acts of reprisal on the part of those who were marked down es victims of the assassins, but when violence is in the ascendant the one question that matters in assigning the guilt is Front whom did the provocation come ? Who was the first to strike ?
