IRISH NATIONALISTS AND THE LATE KING.
• [To THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—What becomes of the Spectator's customary fairness and decency whenever it touches Irish affairs P I find in your last issue (1) an extract from a speech of Mr. O'Brien's amusing official. Nationalists of want of respect to the memory of the late King, and (2) an ingenious suggestion appended by you that their disloyal attitude is to be attributed to the influence of Mr. Patrick Ford. The evidence against Mr. Redmond appears to be his " silence " in the House of Commons,—the " silence " of a man hundreds of miles away, upon an occasion which was only expected to elicit speeches from the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition. At the time you wrote Mr. Redmond had attended the lying-in-state at Westminster Hall; Mr. T. P. O'Connor had delivered a eulogy on King Edward at Belfast; public bodies all over Nationalist Ireland had passed votes of sympathy; Dublin, the headquarters of official Nationalism, had deputed its Lord Mayor to represent it at the Royal funeral. Since then Mr. Redmond has made several speeches, and has begun them by sympathetic references to the King's death; this is only what every one acquainted with the facts—quite notorious facts—must have expected. So much for Mr. O'Brien'a charges and your endorsement of them. Be Mr. Ford, may I remind you that there is no evidence of his having dictated, or attempted to dictate, to the Irish Nationalist leaders; that there is no evidence that he would be in favour of open disrespect to the British Crown; that, on the contrary, he expressed himself to a Daily Mail interviewer as anxious to see Ireland a contented portion of the British Empire ; and that contributions to the Nationalist exchequer are not inconsistent with confidence in
the statesmanship of Nationalist leaders P If the brewers sub- scribe to Tory funds, do we take it as proved that Tory policy is dictated by the brewers P How much less are we entitled to draw such an inference in the case of the patriotic and necessarily disinterested generosity of exiled Irishmen P-
I am, Sir, &c., FRANK MACDEuMOT. The Bath Club, Dover Street, W.
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