IRISH FREE STATE: Rocks, Hammers, Nails

Rocks, Hammers, Nails

The fierce-fighting men of County Kerry had a fine riot last week. Thousands of them, especially the frisky young ones, think there is no finer man in Ireland than Free State President Eamon de Valera of the long gozzle and wild hair. When they heard that his No. 1foe. bullet-headed General Owen O’Duffy. founder of the United Ireland opposition party, was rallying his blue-shirted Irish Fascists to a meeting in the little Kerry town of Tralee by the sea, they got the feel of a shillalah in one hand, the heft of a handful of rock in the other and tramped into Tralee. When they saw the Blue Shirts coming they flung their rocks, howling ”Up de Valera!”, “O’Duffy is a traitor!”, then ducked in for the shillalah work. Some of them set upon General O’Duffy, bludgeoned him bloody-pated before he could get into the meeting hall. Next the howling Kerrymen burned his automobile, waited until the meeting was finished, took a new grip on their shillalahs, fresh handfuls of rock and roared “Come out!”

Two Blue Shirts came out. They were beaten down. When police tried to intervene, the Kerrymen whanged them unmercifully, finally got so completely out of hand that troops had to be called out. The troops stopped the riot by firing into the air, prodding Kerrymen with bayonets and making them Cry with tear gas bombs.

Smuggled out of Tralee, General O’Duffy told sympathizers in Killarney. “I was hit on the head five times with hammers.” In Dublin meanwhile overzealous de Valera sympathizers appeared on the streets with horrid weapons: shillalahs studded with nails. Pitching into two Blue Shirts who were going to a dance at the Mansion House of Dublin’s Lord Mayor, they whanged them without mercy, injured one Blue Shirt so severely that a surgeon had to take ten stitches to close the nail wounds in his head.

No friend to such violence, President de Valera, tall, teacherish and full of ideal?. made in the Dail Eireann last week one of the handsomest apologies ever offered by a chief executive to a mere deputy. Fortnight ago the President had accused Deputy Mulcahy, onetime Free State Defense Minister of going to Glasgow for a secret conference with British Secretary for War Viscount Hailsham—an act that would stink of treason to the nose of any Irishman.

Under suspicion of having connived with the British, General Mulcahy screamed for a thorough investigation of the horrid charge. The talemonger who had given President de Valera his “information” backed down.

“I regret deeply.” said President de Valera in the Dail last week, “that I should have given publicity to a falsehood. I tender my apologies to Deputy Mulcahy.”

Though applause crashed out from all parts of the Dail, General Mulcahy still smoldered with Irish ire. “I demand an official investigation!” shouted he, but Speaker Frank Fahy quashed further discussion.