SINN FEIN IN AUSTRALIA. [To THE EDITOR Or THE "
aptcrATore."]
Sza,—Letters and articles in your columns have given your readers within the last two or three years some particulars of the activities of Sinn Fein in Australia. They may be interested in learning how the cause is now faring. It has received a decided check in the discomfiture of Archbishop Mannix, for which most people here are profoundly grateful to Mr. Lloyd George. The Roman Church is, it must be at once admitted, the backbone of the Sinn Fein monster in this community. Archbishop Mannix and other dignitaries of his Church openly flaunted their disloyalty during the war, and the Archbishop apparently found nothing inconsistent in proclaiming himself a Sinn Feiner and an enemy of England while holding a com- mission as Chaplain-General in the Australian Army.
The orgy of murder in Southern Ireland has also done much to disgust Australians (including the better sort of the Roman Catholic laity) with Irish Nationalism. Yet another factor in the discouragement of the Sinn Fein prqpaganda has been the new policy of the leading newspapers, notably the Melbourne Argus. For a time they gave full publicity to the incendiary utterances of Archbishop Mannix and his fellows. Many doubted the wisdom of this course, though there may be room for difference of opinion on the subject Recently, however, the leading organs seem to have agreed to endeavour to kill Sinn Fein by ignoring it. For example, the Irish Race Convention, held lately in Melbourne, received only the scantiest notice from the Argus and other representative journals, and indeed may be said to have proved a fiasco. Many loyal people thought that the meeting should have been prohibited by the Govern went, as, it may be remembered, was done in Toronto; but the general opinion now seems to be that it was better on the whole to allow the meeting to be held and to treat it as a matter of no public importance.
The Roman Catholic Press, without exception, is exercising a pestilent influence by carrying on a campaign of the most unscrupulous slander of England and the Empire. I send here- with copies of the two Roman Catholic newspapers of Mel- bourne, from which you will get some notion of the mendacity and malignity with which the anti-British propaganda is conducted in one at least of the Dominions. The Advocate is the private property of Archbishop Mannix. Both papers have a large circulation. Sad to say, they are to a great extent, if not chiefly, maintained by the advertisements of Protestant and professedly loyal merchants and traders, some of whom are actually prominent members of Imperialist associa- tions. How they square such conduct with their conscience is something of a puzzle. Their plea is that it is all " in the way of business"; but it would be quite within their power to kill the Sinn Fein Press to-morrow if they chose.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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