President Resigns

Herbert Hoover is a president in the correct sense of the word. No Irishman is. But there is a man called "The President of the Irish Free State." * Last week he had to resign.

President Hoover could be impeached, but short of that neither law nor custom could force him to resign, even if all his pet projects were defeated in Congress a thousand times. Last week in Dublin, however, an adverse majority of only two votes in the Dail Eireanu forced "President Liam T. MacCosgair (William T. Cosgrave) to hand his resignation to the Governor General of the Irish Free State, His Excellency James McNeill, appointed by King George.

"President". Cosgrave had been in power (the same kind of power as that possessed by the Prime Minister of Canada) since 1922. He was thus the dean of European chiefs of states. Under his stern regime, tempered by the assassination of one of his ministers./- Ireland has greatly prospered, speedily progressed, now makes all the Ford tractors that are made, has just harnessed the River Shannon by a mighty hydroelectric network (TIME, Aug. 5). With no War debt, with a strong, exuberant old people who feel they have made a new start, there is nothing wrong with the Irish Free State, except that.it is not Irish, nor free, nor a state, but has the status of a dominion under George V's Crown.

Though out last week, Mr. Cosgrave was not down. The two-vote majority against him was a mere fluke. The leader of the Opposition was not even in Ireland, had nothing to do with the Government's defeat, was in fact in Chicago. Chances were good that before he could return Mr. Cosgrave would again be "President."' Chicago reporters found the leader of the Opposition, Mr. Eamon de Valera, throwing things into suitcases. He has never ceased to call himself "President of the Irish Republic" but might as well claim to be the "Man in the Moon." Said he as he packed: "Should I head the next Irish Government, my principal concerns will be the country's independence, the substitution of Irish for English as the official language, and the elimination of unemployment and emigration."

In Chicago, Mr. de Valera has been soliciting Irish money to start one more newspaper in support of his cause: freedom, legal Irishification of Ireland, statehood. "Mr. de Valera cannot be elected President," said Mr. Cosgrave confidently last week, "with the Dail as it is at present constituted."

Reason: de Valera deputies number only 57 in a Dail of 153. Having slept on this fact in Chicago, Mr. de Valera unpacked, resumed his calls on rich. Irish prospects, pleased his mother. Mrs. Katherine Wheelwright of Rochester, N. Y., who hopes to see her boy before he sails.

*Official title: President of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State.

/-Vice president of the Executive Council Kevin O'Higgins, shot down in the open highway from a speeding car, in 1927.

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