The court-martial recently held on the directors' and editor of
the Freeman's Journal for publishing a false report of the alleged flogging of a civilian by some soldiers in Portobello Barracks, Dublin, sentenced the defendants, Mr. H. Edwards, Mr. M. Fitzgerald, and Mr. P. J. Hooper, to twelve months' imprisonment, and fined their journal £3,000. The attempt made in some quarters to represent this prosecution as an attack upon the Liberty of the Press is a mere pretence. The Nation- alist organ was, of course, deliberately trying to aid and abet the insurreetion, which it does not openly encourage, by publish- ing scandalous rumours about the troops and police. It is the duty of every honest journalist to print what he believes to be the truth, but to abstain from printing injurious statements which he cannot or will not verify. If the conductors of the Freeman's Journal had observed this familiar rule, they would not now be in gaol. The Countess Markiewicz has been sentenced to two years' imprisonment with hard labour for conspiracy to murder soldiers and policemen. She was condemned to death for her share in the Dublin rebellion of Easter 1916, but was reprieved and released by our confiding Government, only to return to her evil courses.
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