SINN FEIN PROPAGANDA ON THE CONTINENT.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR..1 SIR,—When will the Government realize that it is incumbent upon them to take measures against Sinn Fein propaganda on the Continent? For several weeks now it has been the fashion for certain French and Italian newspapers to send a repre- sentative to London or to Dublin to investigate the Irish question. These special correspondents interview and hold con- versations with prominent Sinn Feiners and Nationalists; but they never seem to have a word with a representative of Unionist opinion or of the Government. The result is a series of articles bristling with misrepresentations, travesties of the truth, and, in many cases, direct untruths. The journalists are no doubt quite bona fide and only in search of "copy." The Sinn Feiners see that they get It. 'Even Switzerland is not free from the consequences of Sinn Fein astuteness. In a Swiss local newspaper I found the other day the astounding state- ment that " while very many Irishmen enlisted as volunteers in the beginning of the war in 1914, it was not until after the passing of the Conscription Act in 1916 that the number of Englishmen engaged in the struggle reached 'figures of consider- able importance." So now we know who won the war. It was not France; it was not England; it was not even Scotland or America; it was Ireland! Our new armies of 1914-15 were almost entirely composed of Irishmen !
The failure of the British Government to counteract this pro- paganda is doing infinite harm to British prestige on the Con- tinent. It is not to be wondered at if the ordinary bon bourgeois of Paris, Rome, Milan, or Geneva imagines that the whole Irish question resolves itself into the fact that the cowardly and ungrateful British Government is cruelly oppressing the noble and united Irish nation. Why should ti representative of the Government not receive officially all foreign journalists in London and give the truth for once, with particulars of recruiting in Ireland during the war and of the Sinn Fein outrages since? Indeed, what with the machinations of Sinn Fein and the million Bolshevik pamphlets which one hears are distributed weekly in Glasgow, one would imagine it would be worth while for the Government to re-establish an
efficient Department of Propaganda.—I sin, Sir, Sc., B. C.
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