A Unified Ireland

The Monitor states in the editorial ``Hope and Fear in Ulster,'' Nov. 3, that ``no one could responsibly seek a forcible unification of Ireland involving the involuntary absorption of a large though declining minority.'' Why not? Algeria was once considered to be a part of metropolitan France. Nevertheless, when Algeria's bloody conflict with France came to an end, Charles de Gaulle recognized that the time to consider Algeria a part of metropolitan France also had come to an end, and that people of French descent who wished to remain in Algeria would have to accept Algerian rule.

The British simply have to emulate the French. Members of the Orange lodges who cannot bear the thought of living in an Ireland that is democratic, constitutional, and secular can always emigrate to Britain. Certainly Britain would have the moral obligation to pay the expenses of repatriation.

There is more than a little hypocrisy in the British position. You don't hear British politicians fighting to keep Hong Kong under the Union Jack, even though the inhabitants of that colony would prefer British rule over the uncertainties of the totalitarian regime now ruling China. Robert Nordlander, Menasha, Wis.