SIR, — In the comments made by the author of an article to which Professor Stockley takes objection in your issue of October 30, my name is mentioned as approving the teaching of Communism. I beg space to reply. It is a pity that Catholic writers in a Catholic journal debase our common religion by fabrications to the injury of Irish national ideals, and,— in the case of your correspondent's comments on an extract from a letter of mine,— by deliberate perversions of the truth. I cannot otherwise describe your correspondent's use of the quotation he makes from a letter which I am justified in believing he read in full.
I appeal to your readers.
The quotation in your issue of October 30 was as follows:— " State control of everything, or communal ownership, ior any other social system, may be lawfully argued in a free country."
These words are taken from a letter of mine sent to the principal daily papers (Irish) last May. The letter was headed by me, This Toleration " and was a criticism of one of the Free State ministers,—a criticism of his loyalty both to his country and his religion, inasmuch as, while threatening drastic treatment to Republicans, and in particular to the I.R.A. he pledged himself and his " government" to give free speech and protection to all those who wished to advocate a closer union of Ireland with England, and also to those who held the opinion that " the best form of government for this country (Ireland) was the form of government in Russia."
I criticised this " toleration " of a Free State minister for Atheism and treason. I enclose a copy of the letter, which your correspondent must have read. If he is an honest man, he cannot read support of Communism into it. It is significant that the Free State minister in question was not held up to obloquy for this toleration of atheistic teaching. But then he is not an Irish Republican; he is just a Free Stater who was once a Republican, and it is only loyal and uncompromising Republicans who must be hounded down as " Communists."
To give peejudice no excuse I "ay once more that " extreme Republican Natior ism " is not in union with any kind of Cc munism; no such union has been " eat lished " as your writer would belie Neither the I.R.A. nor Sinn Fein, Cumann na Poblacta, nor Mna na P Eacta, nor Cumann na Ban, are Cc rnunistic, they have not " definitely cat lished union" with any Communistic org isation, nor indefinitely either.
TVIAIRE MCSEYBNE (MaCSWiney) 4, BeIgrave Place, Cork.