Friend From Montana

IRISH FREE STATE

Friend From Montana

The men of Cork sent up a cheer and the tall, big-handed man with a wart on his nose ducked his bald head shyly. When he got the job of U. S. Minister to the Irish Free State last September, William Wallace McDowell was chairman of the Democratic Central Committee in Montana and could have anything he wanted, within reason. Said he: "I wanted to be Minister in some country where they speak the English language. I've been mining copper for 35 years now, and most of the mines out there were dug by the Irish. They sometimes call Butte Little Ireland. One of my friends, the late Marcus Daly, who founded the Anaconda Copper Mining Co., was an Irishman. I am not trained in diplomacy or anything like that but I guess I can handle the job."

Next to copper, giant Russian sunflowers 16 in. wide are Minister McDowell's specialty. "I got the farmers to grow them for cattle fodder. It gives you from 15 to 24 tons per acre. We cut it up just before it gets green, and silo it. Yes. sir, the cows break their necks getting to it."

Montanan McDowell, aged 67, was alone last week. His wife,who had always wanted to live abroad, died last November. Like the Montanans, the Irish liked him. The train that took him from Cobh to Dublin across the astonishingly green-splotched fields was hung with twined Irish and U. S. flags. It was out to set a record and did: 2 hr. 27 min.

During his first week in Dublin Minister McDowell read that some 15% of the winners in the great Irish Sweepstakes drawing for the Grand National Steeplechase were U. S. residents. He found time to watch a drawing from the huge yellow mixing drum under a wall-long panel of racing thoroughbreds, the nurses from the hospitals the Sweepstakes subsidizes pouring bags of counterfoils into the drum.

A bigger sweepstakes was going on last week but Minister McDowell will never be able to show any interest in the fight between President Eamon de Valera and General Owen O'Duffy, head of the Opposition Fascist Blue Shirts. Last week President de Valera was trying to get the Senate to abolish the Blue Shirts and he still wanted to try General O'Duffy on charges of sedition and incitement to murder. When the conservatives of the Senate refused to pass a bill banning the uniform of the Blue Shirts, President de Valera angrily appealed to the Dail Eireann (House of Representatives) to abolish the Senate. Readily they obliged --with a bill which calls for the Senate's approval.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.