Against Everybody?

The only part of the British Commonwealth of Nations not at war with Germany, Eamon de Valera's Republic of Eire has steered placidly and prosperously outside the blockade of all belligerents. His neutrality policy worked so well over the war's first nine months that Prime Minister "Dev" had lately been thinking of holding a general election to cash in on its success. Last month's rape of three little neutrals not so far away upset all that. Appalled Irishmen promptly forgot political enmities energetically cultivated since the civil war. Even William Cosgrave, who rose from saloonkeeper's tyke to President (1922-32), now Opposition Leader of the Dail, rose on his feet last week and plumped for his bitter foe Dev.

Trumpeting "we must all be brothers in one holy cause," gaunt Taoiseach (Leader) de Valera last week formed an all-party National Defense Council of three Cabinet Ministers, three Fine Gael representatives, and two Labor Party men. Prime duty of this Council, whose existence would obviate the necessity for secret sessions of the cumbersome Dail, was to formulate policy on national security, advise the Government without taking executive action.

Simultaneously the Government called up all regular troops (7,000) and reservists (30,000), placing the Army on a wartime footing. Premier de Valera announced the start of a recruiting campaign, the formation of Local Security Corps, whose job was to beat off parachute invaders. The Irish Navy (three ships) expected shortly to double its forces. A department store in Dublin's O'Connell Street placed anti-aircraft guns on its roof.

Ireland's hatches were thus battened about as tight as they could be, except for one factor--the outlawed, extreme-nationalist I. R. A. Nothing short of the unification of all Ireland under its own brand of fascism suits the hotheaded Irish Republican Army, which maintains a complete underground government (and constitution) of its own. Since 1938 its 7,500 youthful members (plus 15,000 fellow travelers) have followed the wild-eyed, bomb-Britain policy of 46-year-old, super-radical Chieftain Sean Russell. There is reason to believe that the intransigent I. R. A.-sters are getting money from the Nazis, mostly by way of the U. S.

Against these fifth columnists, Prime Minister Dev fulminated last week. Defending arrests and intensive police searches for cached I. R. A. arms, he proclaimed: "The liberties for which we are all trustees have been dearly bought. In this land there must not be found one treacherous hand to give them away." From the Most Rev. Michael Browne, Bishop of Galway, came the enormous support of the Catholic Church. "Any Irishman," the Bishop told assembled Connaughtmen, "who assists any foreign power to attack the legitimate authority of his own land is guilty of the most terrible crime against God's law, and there can be no excuse for that crime--not even the pretext of solving partition or of securing unity."

Though warning that Germans were the likeliest invaders, Prime Minister de Valera still clung determinedly to neutrality, hoped that the Irish could keep German submarines out of Cobh harbor, British cruisers away from Lough Swilly. Eire was neutral against everybody.

R. A. F. men last week passed around a good if not true story about a British pilot who got lost and landed at Curragh in Kildare. Growled the tough Irish sergeant who greeted him: " 'Twould fit ye better to thank God you're not a dead man, for a corpse you'd surely be, landing like this without warning, only for our anti-aircraft gun is after going to Dublin for repair after young Mick here jammed it blazing into a flock of wild geese that came overhead last Saturday night."

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