There is a gentle courtesy in the type of argument which suggests that because someone does not agree with someone else it is his right and privilege to indulge in abuse. It is satisfactory to know that Tsingtao is now so quiet that Lari, whose letter appeared in yesterday's issue, has the time to boil with indignation over this journal's comment on the subject of the recent Anglo-Irish negotiations, He seems to agree with the late Mr. Augustine Birrell's obiter dictum that "Minorities must suffer," and that in this case it must be the Unionists in Ireland. The fact of the matter is that the Unionists who have remained loyal to Great Britain are in the majority in Northern Ireland. Were the two divisions of the island united they would be in the minority, and that is a position which they do not care to accept. They cannot be blamed for thinking that an agricultural majority would fail to sympathize with the industrial minority and that the wealth and prosperity of the north would be drawn upon in the interests of the south. That may be a very selfish, and, certainly if all the implications of LATIN'S letter are to be accepted, narrow view to take. But the fact is that they take it. They have been loyal to Britain has already been shown, and Britain's attitude that she will not consent to the proposed Union, until Northern Ireland herself consents, is the only sible recompense which can be made for such fidelity. That good faith should be returned for good faith is surely the most perfect logic, even if it happens to be of that Anglo-Saxon quality which Latin appears to think so quaint. And if in urging such an action this journal has to bear the reproach of row-minded bigotry" it will willingly do so, in the assurance that, in this instance at least, Anglo-Saxon logic is a finer quality than the correspondent's latinity.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.