CORRESPONDENCE.

Taranaki Daily News, 11 April 1918, Page 6

CORRESPONDENCE.

SIR ARTHUR CON AN DOYLE- SELFCON S'ITT UT I'-'l) REPROVER OF IHE IKISH PEOPLE.

To the Editop Sir, —All true patriots in this province felt ft thrill of pri;!e on reading in vl'i." morning's Daily News the great pronouncement of the great President ot the United States; but a mantle of shame covered their faces when tliev found the hospitality of the same :ssue extended to the irreligious outpouring? of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, renegade from religion and patriotism. The great president to whom we all look as to our only hope "would be ashamed to speak with the turbulence and weak language of hatred or vindictive purpose;'' but the novelist, enemy of Christianity and Ireland, assures us on his own new-found infallibility that "hate steels the mind and sets the resolution as no other emotion can do:" This writer of novels, who knows nothing of pure and exalted love, and who sets hatred on the pinnacle where patriotism alono should gleam, knows nothing of human nature at its best. He may, like many of his tribe, know much of that natur which manifested on the backstairs of fallen women or in quarters where detectives ply their trade. But this, thank God, is not human nature. Every man who is normal knows that love is a stronger force than hate; and all who are not abr'vmal or degenerate know that the pi .Lgutor of racial hatred is making Ciod his enemy and is invoking the wrath of. Cod upon himself and his country. In the days of his early success as a writer of detective stories Conan Doyle publicly repudiated the Catholic religion of his boyhood, and with it simultaneously disappeared the patriotic sentiments imbibed in his boyhood for the land that bore him. He had a keen understanding of the motto —"Unprize/l are her sons till they've learnt to betray." But a renegade Catholic does not long remain a Christian, so later, his Christianity was re- j pudiated. and we now find him collaborating with H. G. Wells in the incubation of a new religion which is to replace that of Christ which has grown old and effete. This is the same man who in a pamphlet sent broadcast; through the world denounced the "Belgian atrocities in the Congo," declared that the King of Belgium and the Belgian rubber merchants cut off the feet and hands of the Congoese woman and children, and gave the photographs of the maimed to guarantee the truth of his assertions. But the indefatigable Hillaire Belloc got tipon his tracks, proved that the photographs were faked, (hat the atrocities had no existence, and tearing the pamphlet in shreds, flung it in the facft of Doyle, lolling liiin he had been a fool in the hands of the infamous rubber magnates of London, who, looking for a pretext to seize the Congo rubber fields, were spreading far and wide this lihel upon the King and people of an lionor•able natidrh Then came on the scene thq well known and intrepid Canon Henly Henson, who, by the way, was consecrated a few weeks ago Anglican Bishop of Hereford. lie accosted Doyle. "Hands off the Congo.' he cried, 'and turn your attention to the Amazon while I relate to you the conduct, shocking humanity, of the directors of the British Rubber Company there, and while I pillory by name three British ex-direc-tors of the Peruvian Amazon Rubber Company. And the Canon acted hie part fearlessly. The ex-direetors threatened prosecution for criminal libel, the Canon bade them fire away, repeated his charges, secured a royal commission whose finding shocked humanity; one result being that the British Government appointed a permanent mission to look after the interests of the natives and repoi t on any atrocities that may be perpetrated against them. The head of that mission is a dear, personal friend ot mine. But this did not give his quietus to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who appears again as serenely as of old, this time to lecture the Irish who had already been put to shame by his career. Just one quotation, not the most shocking one, from the Blue Book report of the Amazon Commission:—

"Within fifty metres of the establishment, and in the month when it was customary to bring in the rubber from various districts, the Indians with their wives and children, brought their burdens and, delivered them for acceptance and later for transportation to Iquitoa Port. There they arrived, their shoulders showing open wounds and their bodies black and blue from the whippings givenby the white servants of the company on the way down. On this particular occasion three hundred Bara and Witoto Indians and their familiies remained within the premises, and their white ein. ploycrs for "sport" and other reasons, decided to burn them alive. They first rompelled their victims to make an enclosure of wood and wire one hundred and thirty metres in circumference. Then wood was piled up and saturated with petroleum, the Indians were driven inside, and the bonfire was lighted, while the murderers, arms in hands, shot down those who tried to escape. The dav following the dead bodies Were collected, and the cremation was completed. The facts were.fully proved by those who witnessed the holocaust and gave evidence. During my investigation 1 found a semi-circic one'hundred and fifty metres across, which was a pestilence of half-calcined human remains, with skele. tons of both sexes, of various ages, am? numberless bullets anion? them, whie.i fully confirmed the statements of eyewitnesses. One of the witnesses, Dr. Fernandez, is of opinion, from what he himself discovered, that the records "are but a faint reflection of the truth." Sir Conan Doyle, like an "enfant terrible" striving to injure the gallant Belgians, has brought shame upon those only whose commercial enterprises his campaign would bolster. Writer of lurid and revolting pages he got more than he had bargained for in the sober report of the Amazon Commission. Slay I ask you. Mr. Editor, how long you will try the patience of the long-sufl'er-ing Irish in Taranaki bv allowing men of the Doyle stamp to hurl their jibes at the most patriotic nation on the face ' of the earth. Acquainted with the Home papers, as you must be, you know how often these libels on the Irish race have been disproved. No Irishmen arc intriguing with Germany; Oarson and his small faction did, but ksforn the war; and it is unworthy to permit a discredited writer like Sir Conan Doyle to jibe at the Irish as friends of the German and the Turk.—l am, etc., P. J. POWER. Hawera, April 9.