IRISH FREE STATE: Cead Mille Failte

The Irish liked their last Minister from the U. S., a tall, hard-eyed Montana Baptist named William Wallace McDowell who, after two weeks on the job, dropped dead of a heart attack (TIME, April 16, 1934). Last week the new U. S. Minister to the Irish Free State, Alvin Mansfield Owsley, set out for Dublin Castle to present his credentials, not to King George’s representative, Governor General Donal Buckley, but to President Eamon de Valera.

“Al” Owsley* is rated high among the Roosevelt Administration’s diplomats. Square-faced, shrewd, softspoken, he is a Texan, a lawyer, a onetime national commander of the American Legion, a Christian-Congregationalist, and he has a rich wife. His last job was Minister to Rumania.

Last week he rode through Dublin’s hot streets behind an escort of Free State cavalry, brilliant in blue and saffron full-dress uniforms with orange plumes in their helmets. At the castle yard a battalion of infantry, in green, saluted him. Officers with drawn swords led him upstairs to St. Patrick’s Hall where waited President de Valera. Minister Owsley made a little prepared speech. The Free State President launched into a speech entirely in Gaelic, not a word of which did Minister Owsley understand. “Cead mille failte,” cried de Valera, meaning “a hundred thousand welcomes.” When the strange, rhythmic gurgling and throat-clearing stopped, Minister Owsley replied in his own broad Texas accent: “I am proud on this eventful occasion in this historic Dublin Castle. . . .”

Afterward he told newshawks: “It was all magnificent. I did not see any incident or anything to mar the beautiful warmth of the reception.” What Minister Owsley was so careful to explain he had not seen was a small riot of Irish Communists along his route to Dublin Castle. The burden of the Communist hullabaloo was, with magnificent irrelevancy, “RELEASE TOM MOONEY.” Ostensibly because the California Supreme Court has turned down Tom Mooney’s appeals four times, the Irish Reds threw around leaflets saying, “Owsley does not represent the American people and therefore can not expect cead mille failte.”

*No kin to Cinemactor Monroe Owsley who usually plays cad parts.