THE QUEEN’S VISIT TO IRELAND

Evening Star, Issue 11251, 26 May 1900, Page 3

THE QUEEN’S VISIT TO IRELAND

TO THK KIIITOB. iSik, —Your London correanondent, who has been dealing with the Royal visit to Ireland, must have been on leave of übseuee with R p Van Winkle, for he ia hopelessly behind his time, and I trust mistakes the temper of hia colonial readers. He was certainly not in Dunedin on St. Patrick’s Day, when the Scotch and English citizens did so much to show their goodwill towards the Emerald Isla end their Irish fellow(o'oaisda. Surely at this moment, when the L:sh soldiers are fighting and dying bo bravoly for the Empire—when the Irish colonists are tending ✓their sons to the front, and are subscribing liberally towards the various patriotic funds—and when the Queen has thought her Irish subjects deserving of special notice, wo (your Irish readers) should be spared the unkind sneers that pervade his letters. After the silence of the Press Association we wore certainly entitled to a better description of the Royal visit than the one appearing in your issue of the 24th inst. Your readers would surely not look upon it as news, or need any special assurance, that Mr Redmond and other leading Nationalists “ would shrink from actively insulting an old lady of eighty odd.” And it is a most gratuitous insult to insinuate that their followers would insalt this o)d lady if thov were paid. Why not tell the whole truth about the leading Nationalists, as the English dailies did, and say that they gave the Queen a warm-hearted welcome, and vied with the rest in cheering her as she passed. As the Queen was received this time, so royalty has ever been welcomed in Ireland. Irish hospitality and the national aspirations of the people have never clashed. That there were orange vendors and “ slatternly women ” on the line of the royal progress goes without saying. for, unfortunately, poverty ia to be met wiih in every land, but allow me to ««y that other correspondents saw other sights, and have described the recaption as one of the roost warm-hearted and patriotic events of the reign.— l am, etc., Dbnjiot. Mny t>C [We gave a full account from another point of view of the Queen's visit to Ireland in our issue of the Ilth inst.—Ed. ES ]