SIR,—Rarely have I had such a shock as on opening
the Spectator of March 6 and reading my friend Mr. Brian Inglis's article on the Casement Diaries. I presume we are talking about the same diaries. Apparently the only thing Mr. Inglis and I agree on is that Mr. De Valeries Government is scared out of its wits since—having uninterruptedly howled for the production of evidence against Casement—it has now stopped all copies of the evidence from entering the Twenty-Six Counties. Still, I have studied type- scripts of the Black Diaries. As I will probably have to discuss these in detail in another quarter, I will spare your readers the result. However, my wife, being American, did not need to study them and after two minutes' perusal 'asked : 'Who do they think they are kidding?' and pointed out the intrusion of a period into a typical Casement phrase about an Indian boy 'fingering anxiously his pierced ears.' The interpola- tions in these diaries are not only forgeries—they are forgeries of so crude a kind that any reader can dis- cover for himself the precise method by which they were forged. 'It is significant,' says Mr. Inglis, 'that the diaries have little erotic impact.' It certainly is. If Mr. Inglis, a trained historian, will re-read the diaries with the intuition he displays in this sentence he will soon discpycr.why.T-Yours faithfully,
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