ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS

New Zealand Tablet, 22 May 1919, Page 33

ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS

E. D. M.-vlt is not true to say that we ; do not encourage (short-story writers and amateur - poets .' What we do not like is their practising on - usr- We have set a very high standard for stories and poems and we mean to keep it up. Nobody has a right to be hurt if told that he or she cannot sit down and ; turn out'good verse or good fiction as easily as water from a tap. That implies as much labor and intelligence as goes to the composition of much that we haveas a punishment for our sins to read week after week. The postman little dreams how we hate him.

—Mitchel’s Jail Journal is a book we can recommend. It has literary qualities of a high order, and it is vastly interesting. What a turn of the tables it was when last year the grandson of the Irish felon received the envoy of England in New York! Gavan Duffy's Four Years of Irish History is a useful book on the period. Mitchel never could stand Dully.

J. F. M.—The cables tell the people at home that the disturbances in Egypt were due to hair-brained students, to fanatical agitators, and, to the ragtag of the cities. Do you remember how the cables told exactly the same sort of lie about Patrick Pearse, Tom McDonagh, George Pluuket, • and James Connolly ? You know how false (he report was in one case. Make up your mind for yourself about the other. Any man who asserts that a small nation under British rule ought to have the rights for which Britain said she fought for all peoples is now called a traitor or a Bolshevik. Soon people in Britain will be divided into two classes— Bolsheviks or Sinn Fearers on the one side, and liars on the other.

Fenian. Your remarks do great credit to your head and heart, but the people of this country are not yet sufficiently educated to understand what you are driving at. You must have observed that yourself if you speak as you write. No doubt at all if we published your letter some unkind people would say that you had no more point than the toe of a policeman’s boot. (With apologies to the Bulletin and the police.)

Well-Wisher.—My dear sir, we get each week on an average four letters of advice like yours mixed up with the spring poetry and the fiction that aims at rivalling O. Henry and does not hit even Mick McQuaid. Be perfectly sure of this; the bigotry is there all the time. It is only when we Catholics fight for our rights that it is shown. It is as certain as that the sun rises that Catholics will never get fair play from a Protestant community ■ as that the folk who go to hear Howard Elliott are just as contemptible as himself. When you kow-towand we hope you don’tto the bigots they smile at you and despise you. When you assert that you are, a better man than any of them and that you do not care a pot of jam for them they will no longer despise you, they will not hate you less, but you will make them mad and they will reveal what they feel all the time. Do not imagine that as Catholics or as Irishmen we are ever going to prostitute our position for the sake of a few grovelling traders who try most unsuccessfully to combine the service of God and Mammon. Better specialise on either. Anyhow we wish you well. Pax tecum! The English for that at present is “Keep your hair on.”