which had superseded the Petty Sessions Courts, and such like.  All this, with suppression of newspapers and of all public meetings, went on for many months before Sinn Fein, deprived of its leaders, was goaded at last into attacking the Royal Irish Constabulary.  Whatever the juridical status of the guerrilla warfare thus entered upon (which it is not improbable England would have applauded if employed against any other Empire than her own), it was conducted on honourable lines by the Sinn Feiners.  The policemen and soldiers, including General Lewis, who surrendered, were treated with courtesy, and not one of them wounded or insulted.  Their wives and children were also carefully preserved from danger until the police “reprisals” in the Thurles neighbourhood—­the wrecking of villages and the savage murders of young men—­ended by producing equally ruthless “reprisals” on the other side.  In Dublin, since the Dublin Metropolitan Police declined to go about armed, not one of them has been fired upon.

The real ferocity on both sides began when the “Black and Tans” were imported to take the place of the R.I.C., who were resigning in batches.  It is indisputable—­independent investigation by the Committee of the British Labour Party and the daily messages of fearless British journalists, such as Mr Hugh Martin, establish it beyond possibility of contradiction—­that when the “Black and Tans” were let loose on the Irish people they began a villainous campaign of cowardly murder, arson, robbery and drunken outrage, which should have made all decent Englishmen and Englishwomen shudder for the deeds committed in their name.  Whenever the particulars are fully disclosed they will, I venture to say, horrify every honest man in the Empire.  Not the least disgraceful feature of this black business was the manner in which the Chief Secretary sought to brazen things out and the audacious lies that he fathered, such as that Lord Mayor M’Curtain was murdered by the Sinn Feiners, that it was Sinn Feiners who raided the Bishop of Killaloe’s house at midnight and searched for him (unquestionably with intent to shoot him), that it was the Sinn Feiners who burned down the City Hall, Public Library and the principal streets of Cork, etc.

And then the utter failure of all this “frightfulness”!  Several months ago Sir Hamar Greenwood declared that Sinn Fein was on the run, and the Prime Minister declared they had “murder by the throat,” the fact being that the young men they sought to terrorise were made more resolute in their defiance of the Government.  The only people at all terrorised were the invalids, the nuns whose cloisters were violated by night, the women and children whose homes were invaded at night by miscreants masquerading in the British uniform, maddened with drink and uttering the filthiest obscenities.  And does England take account of what all this is going to mean to her—­that the young generation will grow up with never-to-be-forgotten memories of these atrocities, while the thousands of young men herded together in the internment camps and convict prisons are being manufactured into life-long enemies of the Empire?  Might not Englishmen pause and ask themselves whether it is worth it all, apart from other considerations, to implant this legacy of bitter hatred in Irish breasts?