  We report measurements of He I 5876 emission from the ionized gas outside the
HII regions in three Magellanic irregular galaxies. The mean
reddening-corrected He I / H-alpha intensity ratio is 0.041 independent of
spatial location within each galaxy. This value is much higher than that
measured in the warm ionized medium of the Milky Way and implies the DIG is
ionized by radiation harder than that from a 40,000 K star.
