"LIBERTY " IN IRELAND.
[To vim EDITOR OF TiH " SpEcTATort."] Sia,—When anyone desires to give instances showing how bad either side in Ireland is, no difficulty is experienced, for there is no lack of material. The misfortune is that impartial presentation is so rare. One side was given under the above heading in your issue of May 6th. Here is another instance, told to me by a Belfast man who had been in Cookstown, in the Six County area, and which I afterwards saw in yesterday's Independent, but which has not, as yet at all events, appeared in the Irish Times. On the doors and windows of the private houses and offices of all Roman Catholics printed notices as follows were pasted :—
" PUBLIC NOTICE.
To all whom it may concern.—Take Notice that if any more attacks are made on members of the Royal Irish Constabulary or Loyalists REPRISALS at the rate of 10 to 1 will be made on prominent and well-known Sinn Feiners.
GOD SAVE THE KING."
So far, there has been no action taken by the Ulster Govern- ment, and my friend told me flint the Protestants in Cookstown there, with whom be had remonstrated, said they were going to kill ten Roman Catholics for every Protestant killed. The present ratio of murders in Belfast is three Roman Catholics for two Protestants. The Cookstown people will increase it to ten to one.
Another notice was as follows:-
" You are Hereby required, within 48 hours after the Service of this Notice, to clear out of your employment all Sinn Feiners and Roman Catholics. Herein fart not at the peril of your life. BY ORDER."
This was served on Protestant farmers who had engaged Catholics for the ensuing half-year, and in many cases it is said to have been complied with. Observe that the wording clearly implies that Roman Catholics who are net Sinn Feiners are to be turned out.
In the same issue you published a long letter on the Mayneoth Manifesto. It also puts forward only one side. Your correspondent is wrong in saying that the statements he quotes " are characteristic of the tone of the entire document." He omits to say that the Roman Catholic Bishops ordained that, in the Six Counties, as well as in Southern Ireland, the second Friday in May should be kept " as a Black Fast day in atonement for our sins and as a day of united intercession for peace." This is certainly an acknowledgment of offense on the part of Roman Catholics, and though they repudiated the idea that Roman Catholics were " the instigators and originators of riots in which they are always the chief sufferers," they nowhere claimed that Roman Catholics were practically blameless, as has been often untruly claimed on be alf of the Protestants of Ulster.
In your issue of May 13th you print a letter " The Truth About Ireland." It is an almost unqualified defence of the conduct of British forces in Ireland. I will give you one example of what occurred within two miles of where I live in Howth, a peninsula ten miles from Dublin, which was abso- lutely quiet and peaceable. All the arms held in 1914 by the Volunteers had been surrendered to the police. There had been no drilling, no disorder. The police were on the best of terms with the people. Yet one Sunday a lorry of Auxiliaries drove out from Dublin, saw a group of men sitting in a small enclosed place, halted their lorry thirty yards from them, and shouted something not understood. One of the men got up to ask Ahem what they wanted. They turned a machine-gun on the group; one man and two boys were hit (for fortunately most of the men were sheltered by a projection). The man who was hit ran away to shelter; the Auxiliaries as they followed fired at him. He fell dead after running 140 yards. Of course, the men, when searched, had no arms; there wero none in Howth, as the police knew. The man who was killed was an ox-soldier who had fought four years in France. In one of the cottages of the group where the shooting occurred lived a family whose seven sons had enlisted for the War; the father and mother had been sent for, and the King had thanked them. The funeral was attended by over 160 ex-Service men. This firing was wanton, and being in a district not " proclaimed " was clearly murder in the eyes of the law. The Auxiliaries who drove out there on a peaceable Sunday with their machine- gun never inquired of the police, or they would have known there was no chance of any ambush.
Now, observe what followed. Having made inquiries on the spot, I went to Dublin Castle, where I was most courteously received. I told the official in charge that the " official state- ment" was quite untrue because it said the men were in a field and had run away when called on to halt, and that there- upon they were fired on. I said they were not in a field at all, but in an enclosed yard where they could not run away without jumping a wall, as the wounded man did before he was again shot. The official, a captain, said I must be mistaken, because he had seen the official report. I persisted, and he showed me the original official report received from the officer of the Auxiliaries, which was correct in that particular, though not in others. I showed him the published official report. Dublin Castle deliberately falsified the official report, and published a false report, which put a better appearance on this killing, which in the eye of the law was certainly murder. The "military inquiry," held in place of an inquest, returned the verdict of "justifiable homicide." Partly because the award of compensation to the family of the deceased soldier depended on the attitude of the officials in Dublin Castle, and partly because the officer who had shown me the official report had perhaps exceeded his duty in doing so, I did not think well to publish this disgraceful incident at the time, especially as I had no reason for confidence that if I did so my statement would not be explicitly denied in Parliament. Those who would falsify a report would also suppress the original. But bad I had any reason to suppose it would have led the Authorities to cancel the order which permitted auxiliary troops to shoot at their own will, even in perfectly peaceful neighbourhoods, I would have risked losing the compensation. Your correspondent " X.," in the current issue, who has a real sense of fitness, would be justified in condemning many other stupidities beside the reprisals. If we could only get
each side to see where it is wrong, instead of seeing only where the other side is wrong, we should have a better Ireland.
—I am, Sir, &c., Enwasa P. Cemotawaste Trinity College, Dublin, May 22nd.
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