LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
[Letters of the length of one of our leading paragraphs are often more read, and therefore more effective, than those which fill treble the space.] THE CONDITION OF IRELAND.
[To TRY EDITOR or TIM " aPIOTLTOK."] Sus, —The letter signed " Anti-Humbug " in your issue of Sep- tember 18th cheered a little the drooping spirits of the rapidly diminishing band of loyalists in Ireland. No country gentle- man living on his farm in the South and West. and depending on it chiefly for his livelihood, can afford to announce his loyalty : his house would be burned, his wife and children rendered homeless, his labourers terrorized and prevented from working for him, even if he himself escaped the revolver of the patriot. The most he can do is to keep his convictions to himself, and pray for better times and an awakening of in- telligence among his fellow-countrymen in the other parts of the United Kingdom. The above is a literally accurate state- ment of the condition in the South and Went. And yet last week a Radical weekly, attacking the Belfast loyalists who refused to work with Sinn Feiners, calmly asserted that nowhere in Southern Ireland was anyone persecuted as a Pro- testant or Unionist. Possibly the heroic or the martyr spirit is lacking in the Irish Protestant gentry, though the records of the British Army for the last century show in what numbers they have given their lives for King and country. But they know that their friends and neighbours have no wish to injure thorn or shoot them, and that as long as they keep quiet they are more or lase safe. If, however, by speech or writing, they take a strong line, they attract the attention of the murder- gang headquarters in Dublin; they know that orders will come down for tho boycott or the murder, and that the local shop- keepers and farmers and labourers must, however unwillingly, obey, for disobedience means their own death or boycott.
Moral cowardice in all classes, you will say, and the need for a leader to start active co-operation against the murder gang. But no one knows if the Government would support them. Quite likely the Forces of the Crown might be used to suppress action against sedition—as it was attempted in 1914 to use them to suppress Ulster's revolt against the dismemberment of theEmpire. Itmustbe remembered that the only declared policy of the Government is to create an independent Parliament for Southern Ireland—and that that Parliament would be domin- ated by tho persons who now control the Sinn Fein executive— in other words, the Irish Republican Brotherhood. But, oddly enough, this policy, fatal as it is, does not satisfy the Radical journalist. He raves against the Government for " taking sides" in the Irish quarrel and for allowing the loyalist:: of Ulster to arm themselves in self-defence. Why, in heaven's name, if there are two parties in Ireland, one loyal and the other openly avowing itself a friend of Germany, should not the Government declare itself in favour of the loyalists?
Another Radical paper mourned the fact that in Ulster there was not the " natural " antagonism between Capital and Labour, but an " unnatural " antagonism (fostered, of course, by the wicked Tories) between the creeds. Why is it " natural" for there to be strife between the man who wants work done and the man who wants to make money by doing work? Why is it not natural for there to be strife between the men who believe the Empire is a power for good and those who assert that that Empire is an organization for piracy, plunder, and oppression? The same journalist who would defend the re- fusal of workmen to work alongside a man who aces not belong to their Union—a purely economic: bond—professes righteous indignation at the refusal of loyalists to work alongside Sinn Feiners. lie cannot contemplate the possibility of a workman thinking of anything except the amount of his wage in this connexion, though he is perfectly willing to agree that the kingdom may be plunged into chaos because the workmen do not understand that the Moscow Soviet wishes to envelop Poland. Is it mere stupidity or want of thought? Is it con- sidered a good way of " getting at " the Coalition, or is it merely the hereditary cant of the Radical Party? I think
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