Dominions v. de Valera

BRITISH EMPIRE

(See front cover)

Long, lean Eamon de Valera caught only snatches of troubled sleep last week. Although his home, ''Springville," is but ten motor minutes from Government House in Dublin, President de Valera had a bed lugged into his office. Toiling and arguing with his Cabinet Ministers, Ireland's "Messiah of Freedom'' faced with haggard mien an invisible and potent foe: the collective opposition of very polite British statesmen throughout the Empire. London hurled at Dublin last week a terrifying silence, a lack of further protest against the two major platform promises on which President de Valera was elected: abolition of the Free State Deputies' oath of allegiance to King George; and cancellation of the -L-3,000,000 Irish land annuity to Britain. What the new Irish President faced last week was a series of rebukes from such leading members of the Empire Club as Premier Richard Bedford Bennett of Canada and Premier George William Forbes of New Zealand.

In his Dublin office the President was trying to draft a white-hot Irish reply to the damp reminder he received fortnight ago from Secretary for the Dominions James Henry ("Jim") Thomas that His Majesty's Government "stands on" the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 and stickles for the oath and the annuities.

Before sitting down to write, Mr. de Valera had shouted to a Dublin throng, "Britain cannot frighten us!" These words were received with such enthusiasm that the President was swept in a friendly Irish way by the crowd through a picket fence.

"The Irish people," he resumed amid lusty cheers, "have learned ... the fallacy of surrendering their rights when threatened!"

White Paper. Just now London is significantly close to Ottawa. English Conservatives see eye to eye with Conservative Canadian Premier Bennett, rich lawyer. Last week it was Premier Bennett who set a new Empire precedent by issuing a Canadian White Paper on the Irish Free State. Cautious, lawyerish, it suggested that Mr. de Valera might find, after abolishing the Oath to the King in Dublin, that by this act he had cut loose the Irish Free State from enjoying Empire privileges--including the preferential duties which States within the Empire grant to each other's goods. Can an Oath be so important?

Premier Bennett, recalling that (under Article II of the Treaty of 1921) the Irish Free State has "the same constitutional status ... as the Dominion of Canada," observed that in 1926 the Imperial Conference defined dominions as "autonomous communities within the British Empire, equal in status, in no way subordinate one to another in any aspect of their domestic or external affairs, though united by common allegiance to the Crown and freely associated as members of the British Commonwealth of Nations."

Taking Mr. Bennett's broad hint, leading British newsorgans soon began to say that the Oath is the keystone of Empire and that Canada would evidently not invite the Irish Free State to the Imperial Economic Conference, scheduled at Ottawa in June; with elaborate politeness Premier Bennett warned President de Valera that "only by her own action could the Irish Free State become ineligible to send representatives to the Conference."

After Canada's Bennett, New Zealand's Forbes next politely belabored President de Valera with an official declaration of "the hope of His Majesty's Government in New Zealand that His Majesty's Government in the Irish Free State will not feel obliged to pursue any course that might jeopardize the Free State's continued association with the British Commonwealth-- an association which the Government and people of New Zealand value very highly."

Australia then issued an even stronger statement, which it sent not to London as did polite New Zealand, but direct to Dublin. It was the first major protest in history from one Dominion to another. Ominously Australia hinted that, should the Free State cut loose, Irishmen would become alien not only in Britain but in all the Dominions.

In Dublin sorely harassed President de Valera, made uneasy by the unexpected pressure of men far away on opposite sides of the earth, put aside his first defiant draft reply to Mother Britain, called in leading Irish lawyers, anxiously fussed over their suggested drafts and redrafts.

"Damn Your Concessions!" Irishmen made their new President's life even more miserable last week than did Premier Bennett and Premier Forbes.

"Damn your concessions to England!" headlined Dublin's Republican An Phoblacht before Mr. de Valera had done or conceded anything. "The Anglo-Irish Treaty, lock, stock & barrel must go! Ireland wants no connection with England. The Imperial link must be severed."

President de Valera, only a fortnight earlier, had himself summed up "the aims of the new Government" thus:

"Ireland her own--Ireland her own, and all therein, from the sod to the sky. The soil of Ireland for the people of Ireland, to have and to hold from God alone who gave it--to have and to hold to them and to their heirs forever, without suit or service, rent or render, faith or fealty to any power under heaven."

N. S. W. Almost the only encouragement President de Valera received last week came from that most obstreperous State in all the Empire, the State of New South Wales in the Dominion of Australia, the "repudiating" State of Labor Premier John Thomas Lang (TIME, April 6, 1931). In Sydney irrepressible Laborites assembled, adopted and sent to Mr. de Valera a most welcome resolution:

"This conference, representing the labor movement of New South Wales, is in full sympathy with the Irish people in their fight for self-determination. It deprecates any move to frustrate their wishes and will oppose any attempt at armed intervention in Ireland."

The Two Irelands. Pushed by British pressure out of the picture last week was Eamon de Valera's hope and plan that on becoming President he could negotiate for a union of the two Irelands, North & South, Protestant and Catholic.

Southern Ireland flies the green, white & orange flag of the Free State; Northern Ireland ("Ulster") hoists the Union Jack. Free Staters send nobody to the London House of Commons; Ulstermen elect 13 M. P.'s. Each Ireland has its royally appointed Governor General--in the Free State Mr. James McNeill, in Ulster the Duke of Abercorn.

In Cork last week the Free State's No. 1 industry stood still. Henry Ford's workmen were striking. Depression had shut Northern Ireland's leading shipyards--but Irishmen were not downhearted. Whatever happens the Irish are still on a primarily agricultural basis, can feed and clothe themselves.

Like St. Gandhi--though in less degree --President de Valera is opposed to the Machine Age, vigorously encourages farming, dairying, stock breeding, handicrafts and small-scale peasant industry. The famed Shannon River Power Station has wrought its chief results not in supplying industrial power but in lighting tiny cottages, keeping craftsmen's lathes turning.

"If We Were Free. . ." Not quite ready to release his reply to Britain, which he had finally succeeded in drafting last week. President de Valera (son of a Spaniard) gave an interview of marked lucidity to a fellow Latin, Jules Sauerwein, famed Foreign News Editor of the Paris Matin.

Soberly, significantly the President said: "We are united to England by our geographical position and active economic relations. If we were entirely free: if Ireland were an independent democracy, entirely mistress of her destiny within her natural frontiers, I, for my part, would favor a very friendly political understanding with Great Britain. But as long as there exists against us a menacing fortress on our own soil, and we must live, so to speak, in a state of suspicion, true friendship can never be born between the two nations."

Editor Sauerwein asked about the "menacing fortress." Snapped the President: "British garrisons remain in many of our ports. ... But we are not without means of action. . . . We have great strength in the United States. . . . Do not forget that in the Peace Treaty President Wilson imposed as a condition on Lloyd George a settlement with Ireland. ... If the English are our best clients, we also are their best customers. Certain English ports' companies would be ruined if our cattle did not arrive. We are not so feeble as they think. They can not starve us. . . ."

Friends close to the President said that his note to Britain, although "conciliatory.'' will serve definite notice that he means to ask the Free State Parliament to abolish Oaths and Annuities when it meets April 20th. Privately. Irish lawyers who had advised Mr. de Valera, advised the Press that Canadian Premier Bennett had misinterpreted, in their opinion, the Empire definition of "dominion status." The Free State, after dropping the Oath, would still have its Governor General, they argued. The King would still appoint the G. G. and the Free State would still be "associated as a member of the British Commonwealth of Nations" though no longer "united in common allegiance to the Crown."

Writing for Hearstpapers last week, David Lloyd George reminded the world that he was Prime Minister in 1921 when the Anglo-Irish Treaty was made. He declared: "Full independence . . . the Irish Free State already enjoys. Utter separation would be a curse to it and to Great Britain! ... To dispense with [the Oath] is like dispensing with the marriage ceremony."

Retorted President de Valera, also in Hearstpapers. "Lloyd George was the chief architect of the partition of Ireland. ... He belongs to a world that is dead."

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