Dev Loses His Majority

Everybody in Eire was sure that nobody in Eire wanted last week's general election. But the constitution grants the Dail five years of life, a tenure now up. So the electors, from Donegal to Dublin, walked or jaunted to the polls in every schoolhouse, where those officials known as personation agents checked to see that the living did not vote twice or more, or the dead even once.

When the votes were tallied after four days & nights, everybody in Eire was sure that nobody in Eire, with an exception or two, liked the results.

> Prime Minister Eamon de Valera's Fianna Fail (League of Destiny) Party won 67 seats, a loss of ten. "Dev's" republicans were still the largest group in the Dail, but it had lost a majority (71). The prospect was that Dev would cooperate with a lesser party to get a working administration.

>Opposition Leader William T. Cosgrave's Fine Gael (united Ireland) Party won 32 seats, a loss of 13.

>William Norton's Labor Party won 17 seats, a gain of eight. Labor had expected more.

> Michael Donnellan's Farmers Party won 14 seats, a gain of twelve. The Farmers and their gaunt, roughly garbed, ex-Gaelic-football-star boss scored the surprise of the election.

> The Independents won eight seats, a gain of three. Most notable was the victory of James Matthew Dillon, firebrand from County Monaghan and ex-Fine Gael deputy leader. Among 354 candidates he was the only one who stood for cooperation with the United Nations. Electorated he: "If anyone here wants Hitler to win I don't want his vote."

An Issue Emerges. Behind the election lay a campaign as strange as any remembered by Eire's politicians.

Strangest was the business of getting around the country. Eire, badly short of coal and gasoline, runs its railroads with only one mainliner a day. It has as few long-distance busses as the land has snakes. For a six-week campaign, motor-driving candidates were doled out eight gallons of gas apiece.

Most of the parties and faces were familiar. Save for James Dillon, all candidates agreed on the one thing Eire desires above all else: to remain neutral. At the campaign's halfway point, observers found an astonishing un-Irish apathy, a lack of hecklers and issues. Then, in the closing rounds, William Cosgrave demanded an international-minded coalition government to assure Eire a proper place in the postwar world.

An Issue Decided. Confronted with this issue, isolationist Dev left off reading speeches written ten years ago. He rejected the idea of a coalition' cabinet as a "mixum-gatherum affair." The thought of "bargaining" with Britain, the obstacle to the union of northern and southern Ireland, made him "sick."

The voters' verdict showed that Eire still did not consider World War II or its aftermath her concern. Some observers wondered whether it was not the potato shortage, more than any other factor, that had cost Dev his majority.

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