LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
[Letters of the length of one of our leading paragraphs are often more read, and therefore more effective, than those which fill treble the space.] MARTIAL LAW FOR ALL IRELAND.
(To THY EDITOR or me " SPECTATOR.") SIR,—The plea for Martial Law to be applied all over Ireland raised in " Ulsterman's" letter in your issue of January lath finds its justification in the terrible murders of policemen in Belfast last week. It stands to reason that if the murder- gangs in the South of Ireland are being kept." on the run," they are likely to run to some place where conditions are not so much against them. The seditious element in Ulster is not so strong numerically as it is elsewhere, but there is plenty of it, for all that : it is well organized, and only waiting for the chance of making itself felt. The Crown Forces are proportion- ately weaker than they are in the rest of Ireland, very large areas being unpoliced and defenceless. This is even more the case at night, when such police as there are are shut up in their barracks behind barbed wire and iron plating : able gener- ally to give a good account of themselves if attacked, but incapable of giving any assistance to anyone outside their walls. Not only has the law-abiding population to contend with the members of the I.R.A., but there are numerous gangs of armed robbers who take advantage of the present situation to further their own interests. I do not suppose that in the counties of
Tyrone and Fermanagh you could show one square mile of country in which there is not at least one raid for arms or money within a week. Outside the towns I do not suppose that during the last year one person in the outlying counties of Ulster has gone to bed without a thought as to whether he would be raided that night and what course the raiders would possibly take. Fortunately, human beings are so adaptable that they get more or less used to anything, but the prospects of being murdered as well as raided call for rather more adapt- ability than we have hitherto shown. It would appear that the Covernment were more inclined to experiment on this than to put into force the remedy which would, at any rate, tend to
make the experiment unnecessary.—I am, Sir, &c., • X.
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