Foreign News: In Ireland

At Dublin, correspondents and cinema-cameramen roosted throughout the week near the Dáil Eireann, obstreperous lower House of the Irish Free State Parliament. The hours fled breathlessly because a certain bland clause in the Free State Constitution provides that every Irish M. P. must take an oath of allegiance to King George—which has caused Eamonn de Valera and 38 other elected Republican deputies to absent themselves from the Dáil in protest. Last week they were expected to appear at any moment. Rumor had it that they would force their way into the Dáil without taking the oath. News-mongers chuckled at the thought of filing lurid three-column despatches.

The motive power behind all these rumors was a document signed at London (TIME, Dec. 14) by the representatives of Great Britain, Ulster and the Irish Free State. It provides that the boundary between northern and southern Ireland shall remain as at present, and that Britain shall relinquish all claims upon the Free State for payment of Ireland’s part of the British War debt. The agreement had been ratified earlier in the week by the British House of Commons and the Ulster Chamber. It awaited only the ratification of the Dáil before becoming operative. Why then, so much clamor? Simply because the Irish Republicans have fought long and fiercely to bring back “the lost Catholic provinces of Ulster” into the Free State. Should the present boundary and territorial status quo be recognized as permanent by the Dáil, these aspirations would goglimmering. Hot-head De Valera cried: “Shall our sympathizers in Ulster be surrendered as helots to their enemies? Shall we stomach a dishonorable peace because the Free State is to be a little pampered in respect to her debts by England?”

Eventually the stomaching was accomplished. The De Valerists, threatened by President Cosgrave of the Irish Free State with the dissolution of the Dáil if they attempted strong-arm politics, continued to “abstain” and the measure eventually passed 71 to 20.

Throughout the Empire the keenest relief was expressed on every hand. Premier Baldwin declared: “Had there been no settlement of the boundary question by agreement. . . chaos in Ireland would have resulted.” Replying to those who carped at England’s virtually “buying peace” by relinquishing her claims upon the Free State, he cried: “Where does the interest of Great Britain lie! Does it lie in keeping the South of Ireland poor and trying to squeeze a debt out of her? As a matter of pure business the interest of this country lies in a prosperous and peaceful Ireland.”

Since the Irish Free State is admittedly too poor ever to pay the undetermined hundreds of millions of pounds which it might eventually have been adjudged to owe the Empire, Mr. Baldwin’s logic was widely considered irrefutable. President Cosgrave spoke of the agreement as marking “a turning point in Irish history” and likely to strengthen the Free State’s unstable credit. Sir James Craig, Premier of Ulster, went so far as to propose that the Ulster border police be disbanded as a definite fruition of the present accord.