THE ANALOGY BETWEEN FRANCE DURING THE WAR AND REPUBLICAN IRELAND.
Pro THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTLTCR."]
Sin,—Mr. Armstrong's comparison (September 23rd) of the wrongs of the Southerners in Ireland, with a hypothetical ease of what might be expected to happen in France had the Germans succeeded in occupying it permanently, is almost too absurd for comment. Two criticisms may, however, be made :- (1) In France the situation would never, from the first, have been other than that of open and acknowledged "war " (and conquest), in the strict sense of the term. In Ireland, till political "necessity " inaugurated the terrible follies of the Asquithian regime, and broke what Mr. Redmond himself called the most peaceful period his country had known for 200 years, the relations actually in force between the two peoples were those of toleration, community of interest and reciprocal benefit. The "Easter Rebellion " let loose, among other things, all the riff-raff elements in the land, who are now in the saddle, and justify their doings by the comprehensive term " state of war," the mere use of which implies open defiance of the majority of their own countrymen.
(2) In France the sufferers, according to Mr. Armstrong's analogy, would be the members of the victorious race, subjected to reprisals from a maddened populace. In Ireland the sufferers are the inoffensive English loyalists, who only ask to be allowed to continue in the homes that have been theirs for generations, and who, when masked men evacuate their undefended houses before burning them to the ground, are generally, for their own safety's sake, found to be weaponless. The tale of the wolf and the lamb is apparently not yet obsolete.-4 am, Sir, &c.,
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