30) your Dublin Correspondent denounces as " wanton vulgarity " any reference to words used by Wolfe Tone which on the face of them bear a construction derogatory to his conjugal fidelity. Be this as it may, it is not quite honest to win sympathy for him as a friend to Catholicism, without divulging his own explicit views on the Church as recorded in his diaries. Whatever his motives for " his organisation of the Catholic body for political action" in Ireland, his writings declare in no equivocal terms his fierce hatred and contempt of the Mass, of convents and of the Papacy. Marx, Lenin and Caballero could hardly better his violence of language. Such an attitude was rare among
the United Irishmen. It explains in a measure why that great Catholic patriot. O'Connell, whole-heartedly condemned him among others of the '98 men.
F. M. Keeev.
37, Holywood Road, S.W.I0.
"Tone's Real Point"
SIR.—Your Dublin Correspondent takes Mr. San O'Faohlin severely to task because he has printed in his book on Wolfe Tone passages from the original manuscript of Tone's journals, passages which Tone's son and subsequent editors suppressed.
I have not read Mr. O'Faolain's work, but I understand that the passages in question have been collated with the original manuscript. Certainly no historian will agree with the view that because these passages are discreditable to Tone they should
be suppressed. History is already onesided and inexact enough. What would it be like if editors were to expurgate whatever they disliked in an autobiography? Your correspondent actually talks of these words " being an offence to the dead." " unfair and malicious," when of course the real point is whether Tone wrote these passages. If the evidence is conclusive on this point. then any historian will have to admit that Mr. O'Faolain has a perfeo right to use them. Tone's own words are obviously of first importance in any estimate of what manner of man he was, and I do not think that anything can be gained from shirking the facts if they are facts, JAMES HOGAN.
Department of History, University College, Cork.