LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
[Letters of the length of one of our leading paragraphs are often more read, and therefore more dective, than those which fill treble the space.]
"LIBERTY " IN IRELAND.
(To THE EDITOR OP THE " SPECIATOR."3
Snt.,—My attention has been drawn to a letter in your issue of May 27th, written by Professor Culverwell, in which he repeats for English consumption what a Belfast man said to him in reference to reprisal posters in Cookstown. The Professor has gained a certain amount of notoriety in Ireland, not, indeed, by any contribution to science or literature, but by what his contemporary—the late Dr. Starkie—described as his " enormous capacity for saying offensive things." If his letter had appeared in an Irish paper only no one would have taken any notice of it, but it is quite possible that in England the Professor's " silver hairs may purchase men's opinions." One would think that even a Mathematical Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, .though perilously near the annosa cornix stage, might know the value of getting at correct sources of information and of not accepting without investigation all that he is told, especially in these times and in this country. The story which gives Professor Culverwell such evident lip- smacking has just sufficient truth to make it as dishonest as a complete fabrication. It is quite true that posters announcing reprisals on prominent Sinn Feiners at the rate of ten to one were seen in Cookstown. But did the learned letter-writer, with his unswerving fidelity to the role of an "impartial " reporter, ask his informant by whose authority these were issued? Or was his appetite for disagreeable knowledge glutted by being told that " the doors and windows of the private houses and offices of all Roman Catholics" were draped with these bloodthirsty notices? Surely a little unacademieal sense might have suggested that there was something suspicious- looking about the rate of reprisal, and that the distribution of the posters with such profuse exactness over one class of build- ings was rather a tall order ! These considerations alone ought to have made the seeker after truth " slow of heart to believe all that the Belfast gentleman said." The facts are as follows : A few posters of the kind indicated did appear. I saw and read one which was on the gable. of a Protestant establishment, but, so far as I have been able to ascertain, there were not more than four or five posted in the whole town. Who the author or authors were is not generally known even yet, but one thing is known for certain, namely, that the notices were in no sense official, and it is extremely doubtful if anyone here was misled by them. After having investigated the most trust- worthy sources I am authorized to state that the posters, which all decent people regret, did not issue from any class of the police force, nor from the Orange Party. As a matter of fact, the "B Specials," who originally got the blame, have been trying to track down the perpetrators.
These circumstances might easily have become accessible to Professor Culverwell if he had been concerned with respectable sources of information, but then, being a votary of " impartial presentation," he oould hardly have used them for his attack on Ulster: In reference to the second notice, which demanded the dismissal from Protestant employment of all Roman Catholics and Sinn Feiners, it may be sufficient to prove its bogus character by saying that in this town and immediate neighbourhood there are four hundred Roman Catholics under Protestant paymasters; not one of that number has been "cleared out" as a result of the proclamation! Perhaps it may interest the " impartial " Professor to know that one Protestant is employed by a Roman Catholic shopowner. Permit me to conclude with a little homely but useful advice, which may be learned from no less a person than Plato. That great philosopher refers to a razor so constructed as to perform the duties of a. breadknife also. If Professor Culverwell will condescend to prosaic inferences he will probably agree with me that this ingenious contrivance is likely to execute its double function badly. By the application of similar logic we may admit the possibility of an individual so con- structed as to become a Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, and also a regulator of Irish crises, but I fear we must place him in the same category with Plato's razor.—I am, Sir, &c., PERCY MARKS, B.D. (Rector of Cookstown).
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