SHOCKING CONDITIONS

Hokitika Guardian, 1 December 1920, Page 2

SHOCKING CONDITIONS

A CORRESPONDENT'S REPORT. (LONDON TIMES SEE VICE—COPYRIGHT] (Received This Day at 8.30 a.m.) LONDON, Nov 29. The “Times” special correspondent travelling in Ireland telegraphs a gloomy picture of the existing conditions. Everybody is leading a life. of panic. It lias become a nation of whisperers. No man trusts his neighbour and dares not discuss the daily horrors publicly for fear of being overheard. Men go to bed.at nights, fearing a dreadful summons may thunder at the door during the hours of darkness. Hardly an evening passes without the Bound of shooting. Grim warning letters and other alarming threats are merely commonplaces. Everywhere one may find people cruelly knocked about, thrown in rivers or their houatas burned about their ears. Every night thousands sleep in the fields, hedges andi haystacks, fearing to return home, or else lie cowering, abed expecting death in a Christian country in the 20th century. All sections are sick of the unbearable suffering, nightmare and terror. The mass of the people are no longer trusting any Government and look wistfully to the Sister Isle, and the cry “If only the people in England knew, is heard everywhere. The correspondent believes if the Commons pass the Liberal Home Rule Bill with special Ulster provisions and submit it to a separate Irish ballot ensuring freedom from Sinn Fein terrorism, it would command a seventy per cent, majority.

A Dublin correspondent states intense national despondency is caused by the Liverpool incendiarism. All parties, including the Catholic hierarchy, desire a truce, but such, appears unlikely to be forthcoming, unless the Bishops make a move, which is unlikely. The railway situation is unchanged. Only one-main line train is leaving Dublin daily. The authorites are enrolling three thousand special constables in Belfast and quadrupling the police strength.