IRISH FREE STATE: Two in One?

Belfast bowed stiffly last week to Dublin. The Rt. Hon. Viscount Craigavon, Premier of Northern Ireland, revoked the decree which has barred from Northern Ireland that notorious person Eamon de Valera.

This bow to Dublin was necessary because in Dublin popular Mr. de Valera had just been elected and had taken office as “President” (i. e. Premier) of the ”Irish Free State” (i. e. Southern Ireland). Fearfully Belfast Protestants heard that Dublin Catholics were roistering in wild Irish fashion every night, shouting that the two Irelands must become one Republic.

In Dublin events quick-stepped both day and night. To become President, Mr. de Valera had had to oust President Cosgrave (TIME, Feb. 29). But Enemies de Valera and Cosgrave are both devout Catholics. United by Rome, they knelt together at a solemn votive mass in St. Mary’s, Dublin’s procathedral, before starting their battle in Dublin’s parliament. Sarcastically Battler Cosgrave said, “We will give President de Valera every opportunity to develop his policies. We don’t want to hear his explanations of policy—we want to see what he is going to do!”

In order to become President, tall, stoop-shouldered, teacherish Mr. de Valera had to take, in writing, this oath:

“I, Eamon de Valera do solemnly swear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of the Irish Free State as by law established, and that I will be faithful to H. M. King George V, his heirs and successors by law in virtue of the common citizenship of Ireland with Great Britain and her adherence to and membership of the group of nations forming the British Commonwealth of Nations.”

As he has when inscribing this oath (required of all Irish Free State Deputies), Mr. de Valera said severely to the oath-clerk, “I am not taking any oath or giving any promise of faithfulness to the King of England. … I am putting my name here as a mere formality.”*

In Rochester, N. Y. a quiet old lady who dresses mostly in black was told that her son had become President. ”I am very happy to hear the news,” said Mrs. Catherine Wheelwright. She bore Eamon de Valera where Manhattan’s Chrysler Building stands today. The President’s father (a Spaniard) is dead and so is his stepfather, Mr. Wheelwright. Several times Eamon de Valera has visited his old mother in Rochester.

In Dublin the first act of the de Valera Government was not to bring in a bill abolishing the oath to King George, as President de Valera has promised to do. To draft this bill would take a few days. But hot out to Arbour Hill Prison rushed the Free State’s new Minister of Justice, James Geoghegan. At the prison he discovered “conditions” which he blamed upon ex-President Cosgrave.

There was not enough heat. The Minister of Justice ordered more. And in bed the Minister of Justice found George Gilmore, a shocking state of affairs!

Prisoner Gilmore had remained in bed, the Minister of Justice was shocked to learn, ever since he was sent to jail three months ago. So much staying in bed had made him pale. But Patriot Gilmore absolutely refused to get out of bed and put on his prison uniform. There it lay across his chair.

Sternly the Prison Governor was rebuked for taking away George Gilmore’s own clothes. Mr. Gilmore was a “political prisoner,” ruled the new Minister of Justice, and hereafter all political prisoners will wear their own clothes in the jails of the Irish Free State. By the time this piece of work was done it was late at night. Early next morning an expectant Irish throng massed outside Arbour Hill Prison.

By decree of the de Valera Government 20 prisoners were set free before noon. Loudly cheered by the mob, they rode away in motor cars bearing banners, WELCOME HOME, PRISONERS! As soon as ex-Prisoner Frank Ryan got home he restarted his Dublin paper The Republic, demanded that the two Irelands be proclaimed one. Up hundreds of Dublin flagstaffs went the banner of the illegal and unconstitutional Irish Republican Army.

The Army has enormous stocks of arms. George (“Stay-Abed”) Gilmore was sent to jail after his arrest in connection with the Cosgrave Government’s discovery of one of the Army’s secret munitions dumps. Last week Stay-Abed Gilmore and other members of the secret General Staff of the Irish Republican Army met near Dublin. Anxiously Belfast and London waited.

* In his last hours as Kaiser, indecisive Wilhelm II asked General Groener whether he and other German officers would keep the oath they had sworn to their Emperor. Replied General Groener who today is Germany’s Minister of Interior and Defense, “What is an oath, Your Majesty? It is only an idea.”