AMERICA AND TTLF,T.AND.
[To THE EDITOR OP THE " SPECTATOR."] SIR, —Tke letters from two American correspondents, Mr. George L. Fox and Mr. Walter S. Kupfer, which you print in your issue of March 26th serve no purpose save to prolong a dangerous misunderstanding between your country and ours. To Americans (and. I do not refer to Americans of Irish descent) England's failing with, respect to Ireland seems to be that she does not pursue a policy, but merely coddles a state of mind. Unpremeditated blunders pile up, and the desired end, namely peace, retreats further and further into the distance. I believe that so long as England maintains an attitude of mind instead of pursuing a statesmanlike policy, she will not have the sympathy of impartial Americans, no matter how greatly they may admire her traditions and general qualities, no matter how many individual Englishmen may happen to be their very good friends. This, however, is a matter of opinion. There remains a fact which it is unwholesome to ignore, and which you, therefore, will not think it unfriendly in me to bring to your attention. Nothing is to be gained, and much is to be lost, by pretending that the only people in America who are shocked by the policy of reprisals are Sinn Fein hooligans. It may be unpalatable, but it remains most emphatically a fact, that there is a large (and, by every sign, a growing) body of moderate-minded Americans, with no previous bias either for or against England, who believe that the essential friendship between the two countries is being placed in serious jeopardy by the present British Government's action.
It is not anti-British, surely, to state this fact honestly. I who state it happen to have not a drop of Irish blood in my veins, and take considerable pride in many British fore- fathers. And I only echo what Lord Bryce and Lord Grey and Lord Robert Cecil and the Archbishop of Canterbury and many other good and true and intelligent Englishmen are say- ing. It is anti-British, in the sense that it is disastrous to Anglo-American accord, to pretend that all protests against your Irish manoeuvring which come from this side of the Atlantic arise from the propaganda of prejudiced Irishmen or reckless Radicals. Blindness is not a virtue. Only the blind can condemn, as your American misinterpreters do, the deplor- able crime and violence of the Shut Fein revolutionists, with- out recognizing at the same time the responsibility of the British Government to put an end tb the intolerable :situation which produces that crime.—I am, Sir, he.,
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