Protestant President

Into Dublin's Department of Agriculture Building last week strode a 78-year-old, tall, erect, walrus-mustached Gaelic scholar. There, flanked by Eire Ministers, high court justices and Parliament leaders, this poet, playwright and author, Dr. Douglas Hyde by name, received from Civil Servant Wilfrid Brown formal notification in Gaelic that he had been elected first President of Eire. No vote-counting was necessary for Civil Servant Brown to reach this conclusion, for Dr. Hyde had been chosen by both Eamon de Valera's Fianna Fail Party and William T. Cosgrave's Opposition Party. He had been unopposed for the Presidential nomination.

After a pledge to do his best in office, a ride down Merrion Street to Government buildings, a lunch with Prime Minister de Valera, the President-elect, nicknamed by Gaelic enthusiasts as An Craoibhin Aoibhinn ("the delightful little branch") after a line in one of his poems, went to inspect what will be his official home after he takes office on June 1. The granite viceregal lodge, seat of hated British power in old Ireland, resembling Washington's White House, situated in wooded, spacious Phoenix Park, will now be known as Arus an Uachtarian ("President's Residence").

Chief among Dr. Hyde's Presidential qualifications are: 1) He is old and normally would not serve more than his first term, thereby leaving room for some younger man--like Prime Minister de Valera--to take his place seven years hence; 2) he is a Protestant and as a Protestant President of an overwhelmingly Catholic country may help to persuade the 1,290,000 inhabitants of stubbornly independent, strongly Protestant Northern Ireland that in a political union with Eire (strongly urged by de Valera) no Protestant would have anything to fear; 3) although an Irish nationalist, he is a "nonpolitical figure" and just the kind of non-controversial head of state that a country intermittently rocked by violent political quarrels needs. Son of a rector of County Roscommon, Dr. Hyde's academic fame rests on his work for the revival of the Irish language as president of the Gaelic League, on his collections of Celtic folklore and on his authorship of Twisting of the Rope, first Gaelic play produced at Dublin's famed Abbey Theater.

Long-standing differences between England and Eire seemed settled last week when Britain's House of Commons endorsed without a vote Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's recent negotiations with Eire. Only opposition to Negotiator Chamberlain came from chubby, die-hard Tory Winston Churchill, who objected to withdrawal of British forces from the three Irish treaty ports of Cobh (Queenstown), Lough S willy and Bere Haven, who loudly wondered if Prime Minister de Valera was really a friend of England. But Negotiator Chamberlain called his Anglo-Irish bill an "act of faith," admitted he had granted generous terms to Eire to gain her friendship. In Eire it was announced that Neville Chamberlain will spend a fishing holiday this summer in Galway--the first visit of a British Prime Minister to Ireland since 1916.

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