Time Marches Back

Dazed peasants in County Limerick, staring up this week from their fields, may have thought the Old Boy himself was whipping those demon horses and riding that painted coach down the road to Rathkeale. But it was the Irish Stagecoach, a spanking four-in-hand, with liveried coachman and guards, sounding an ancient English horn in the good Irish air. Revived by Viscount Adare, perhaps as a publicity gag for wife Nancy's holiday inn at Adare,/- the stagecoach carries 25 passengers, will make three de luxe trips each week.

Less de luxe makeshifts are being employed by other Irish, for Eire faces several acute war-born shortages. Coal and gasoline are so scarce that Irish trains have grown fewer and less predictable than ever; many passenger buses are being discontinued. After a generation of disuse, sailing-boat transports sail again. Dublin streets swarm with hundreds of awkward, new bicycle riders, and Dubliners who own autos have hitched horses to them. Paraffin is so scarce that Donegal peasants now use rushlights, make candles from mutton fat. Fisherfolk in the western islands are catching shark for oil to light homemade lamps. This spring the wheat shortage threatened a bread famine by midsummer, but a 7,000-ton shipment from Canada brought some relief. Worse still, there's devilish little tea--and all for a war the Government will hardly admit exists. Only bright spot in the deepening gloom: you can always blame the British.

/- Patronized by Pan American Airways passengers fogbound at Foynes, 15 miles away.

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