Mr. De Valera's letter was dated from the Dublin Mansion
House on August 24th, and was described, with the customary affectation, as the " official translation," though nobody, we suppose, pretends that the authors of the letter thought it out or even wrote it in Erse. Mr. Do Valera said that the " anticipa.: tory judgment" which he had given in his reply of August 10th had been unanimously confirmed by Dail Eireann. In other words, Sinn Fein had rejected the British proposals. Ho remarked that Mr. Lloyd George, in his letter of August 13th, had argued that the " geographical propinquity " of Ireland to Britain required the subordination of the rights of Ireland to the strategical interests of Britain. " We cannot believe,". he went on, " that your Government intended to commit itself to a principle of sheer militarism, destructive of international morality and fatal to the world's peace."
