SINN FEIN AND THE BELFAST RIOTS. (To THE EDITOR or
THE SPECTATOR.”]
Sia,—After your remarks last week as to the cause of the recent riots in Belfast, perhaps you and your readers may be interested in the following extract from the letter of a resident in that city:— 'Last week has been a dreadful one in Belfast. The Sinn Feiners sent gunmen up from Dublin to start disturbances here, so as to lend point to their reply to Lloyd George, in which they contend that the Catholic minority is not safe owing to Orange bigotry! As a matter of fact, not a Protestant fired a single shot, but they captured one of the gunmen, who turns out to be a very noted and well-known Dublin specimen, and gave him what for' with their fists (the only weapons they had), and he is now in hospital. ' E. T.' told me that he saw the starting of the firing in Donegall Street; men walked out into the street, undisguised in any way (knowing they would not be recognized in this town), and fired revolvers up and down the roadway, not at anyone in particular, but indiecriminately at the pedestrians. S. P.' says that in the Old Lodge Road there had been no disturbances or bad feeling of any kind, but suddenly. men took up positions, two at each street corner, and simultaneously opened fire along the footpaths. He also said that an Englishman who was in Belfast last week for business told him that one of the men he had come to see was a Sinn Feiner, and that when he (the Englishman) commented on the street firing, the Sinn Feiner replied : 'Take S good look at Belfast, for' it-will loak -very' dile reis t --next time- you come. The Dail Eireann is not going to leave one stone of it on another, or few people alive in it, till Ulster consents to come into the Republic!' So that is what we are faced with—but I suppose the Radioal-Liberal and Dublin Press will, as usual, attribute it all to Orange bigotryl"
I may add that my correspondent, and many other inhabitants of the "Six Counties," are strongly of opinion that De Valera and his colleagues are prolonging " time " (by giving the British Cabinet a loophole for further discussions) in order to corn. plete their preparations for " coercing " Ulster.—I am, Sir, &c., 11. S. M.
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