SIR,--Evasiveness has no part in the delibera- tions and writings
of Mr. Rend MacColl and myself. For examples in the art of evasion your correspondent Mr. Cullen should study the answers of successive Home Secretaries when questioned about the Casement diaries.
May I endeavour to enlighten Mr. Cullen on the points which confuse him? When I examined the original diaries, I had armed myself with extracts from the typescripts— time, date, place and the actual quotations. There they were in the originals, exactly as I expected to find them in the handwriting of Casement. Interpolation after the writing of the diaries would have been out of the ques- tion. There was no space to do so, and the slight fading of the ink was a guarantee of fact.
To the second burden. Thomson was by no means a meticulous recorder of detail. Agre,ecl he had the 1903 and 1904 diary in his posses- sion, and although there are lesser entries of sexual practices, they are none the less there- thirty or forty of them. The Normand forgery theory does not hold water and I have answered it in the third paragraph of my article (June 15). I am in entire agreement with Mr. Cullen about establishing the truth about the diaries. Give me a courageous legal adviser and a fear- less publisher and I will do' the job.—Yours faithfully,
PETER •SINGLETON-OATES
38 Tregunter Road, SW 10 'WOMEN IN ANTIQUITY'
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