POLITICAL PARTIES

Evening Post, Volume CI, Issue 111, 11 May 1921, Page 5

POLITICAL PARTIES

MR. FRASER'S REPLY TO MR. WILFORD

Mr. P. Fraser, M.P., writes to The Post as follows in reply to Mr. T. M. Wilford :-r

"Mr. Wilford is immense—immensely funny. Ho now calmly expects us to believo that* his object in complaining of a stab in the back from Sir James Allen was not for the.purpose of replying to the reported statement of the High Commissioner, but to draw my humble self. Wonderful! Prodigious ! I really ought to feel highly nattered. Unfortunately for Mr. Wilford, people gonerally are not such simpletons as he imagines them to be. He has badly overestimated their credulity. They will dismiss his little tale as a good yarn—but thin. I fully expected Mr. Wiiford ih dodge, evade, side-track, or shuffle from, my question in Monday's Post on the policy of the Lloyd George Government, which controls the British Empire policy, in Ireland; but I did not anticipate that lie would run helterskelter" behind his smoke-screen from it ( as he has done. I asked Mr. Wilford' in the plainest language possible if he considered the Jove of country displayed by the Irish people to be of the genuine kind which he respects and honours. I am quite willing and ready to answer the questions put by Mr. Wilford to me, but as I entered tho field first with questions I must insist upon my prior right to a straightforward* answer from him before doing so. To make the matter as simple as possible I ask Mr. Wilford :—

"1. Does he consider that the love of country displayed by tlio Irish people i« their struggle for Self-Determination is of that genuine kind which he respects and honours?

"2. Is he is favour of Self-Determina-tion for Ireland?

"When Mr. Wilford answers these two questions without dodging, evading, or side-tracking, 1 will be delighted to immediately publish my answers to his questions. In fact, they are now ready for publication. Mr. Wilford will surely not refuse to show us to what length his boasted lovo of Empire takes' him. > "I did think of asking in addition— (3) What difference is thore between the Liberal and Reform. Parties? (4) What is the Soviet form of Government? (5) What is Communism ? But as I have no" desire to set Mr. Wilford an impossible task I do not insist upon him attempting to answer these three questions. ' .