17 JUNE 1916, Page 2

Why do not the Government tell the true story, and

let the world know how, after every excess had been allowed them, the National- ist insurgents fell suddenly upon British soldiers and unarmed loyal civilians without warning and perpetrated more than a dozen vile murders in cold blood ? We ask for no reprisals, and we have no desire that crimes even as hideous as these should for a moment stand in the way of the Government's attempt to settle the Irish problem. We do ask, however, that silence should not seem to give consent to these barefaced attempts to represent the British as having treated Ireland ` far worse than the Germans treated Belgium or the Austrians Bohemia.'