RADICALISM AND SINN FEIN.
[To THE EDITOR OP THE " SPECTATOR29 SIR,-It were idle indeed to look for lively sympathy from the idealist Radical Press for outrage and injury inflicted on our countrymen in Ireland. No explicit attempt, indeed, is made to whitewash the barefaced criminality of Sinn Fein, as was done for the Land League in the famous "Not Guilty" leading article. But crime is represented en bloc as a calamity natur- ally following on any attempt to enforce Government or assert the law. The influential organ which preaches counsels toe good for humanity out of the profits of a "gambling hell," which (on perfectly impossible grounds) opposed all war, which
on the most sordid and contemptible of pleas failed to dissuade the nation from its last heroic effort, persistently discourages every exercise of "militarist" energy where it is most obviously indispensable, as witness the heading of to-day's (August 1st) issue—not a word of honest indignation at the continued mas- sacres of innocent servants of the Crown, but—" Government Policy of Repression." Think of that! No sympathy, no tenderness towards organized ruffianism and murder, but chilly unfeeling Repression.
Would to God, many of us are exclaiming, that some of the repression could be applied to those whose cowardly weakness darkens counsel, and hugs a nominal pacifielam which is worse than overt war !—I am, Sir, &c., UNIONIST.
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