[TO THE EDITOR 07 TRY " SPIE:TATOR."1
SIR,—I feel impelled to offer something more than silent appreciation of your editorial comment in the Spectator of May 6th on the punish- ment of the Dublin rebel leaders. While fully sharing your views as to the absence of any desire " to clamour for any man's blood," the outstanding consideration remains that leniency would have been not merely unjust, but certain to evoke later manifestations " on a system of limited liability " for treasonable acts. We are being told in America that the executed men should have been dealt with as prisoners of war— regardless of the radical distinction between honourable enemies and red-handed traitors to a country which has gone so far to make amends for the sins of earlier generations. Americans make much of these latter, with little thought of deeds and sentiments tending at least to condone conditions very imperfectly realized on this side of the Atlantic. We hear little of the weaknesses of the Irish character, while every form of abuse is poured upon English rule. Even members of Congress, to say nothing of those found in State Legislatures, find it compatible with their office to formulate and urge condemnatory resolutions from their seats, and to stump the country on matters wholly alien to their province. One can imagine what would happen if the positions were reversed, and if English M.P.'s and others were to denounce American lynchings through similar channels. It must be said that the insistent American demand for Irish independence sounds strangely in the mouths of a people who maintained a four years' war to preserve their own Union. By some peculiar mental process they seem able to find differences between the
two cases which justify them in affirming that all concessions, including even the Socialistio 'Wyndham Land. Act, aro necessarily futile so long as " the main thing " is withheld. They thus align themselves with the Sinn Feiners and other irreconcilable enemies of England. As regards the revolt and its consequences to date, one marked incon- sistency is apparent. Although Nationalist leaders began by minimizing the rising—describing it as purely local—it is now being made the basis of an agitation to secure the immediate application of the suspended Home Rule Act. Even apart from the well-established absence of an electoral mandate for that measure, it might have been expected that the inevitable Constitutional changes due to the war, entailing the effective bringing in of the Dominions, would have served as a bar to any action of that kind. Elementary prudence would exclude the complication of an Irish Parliament "in being " at a time when the larger problem is under discussion. It is only too clear that the Nationalists at Westminster count for as much with the Coalition Government as they unfortunately did with the Liberal Government of unhappy memory.—I am, Sir, &c., Joan S. Honosos. Beverly, Mass., U.S.A., May 27th.
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