Evening Post. TUESDAY, AUGUST 23, 1927. BREAKING THE RECORDS

Even after Mr. de Valera and fortytwo other Republicans had taken the oath and entered the Dail, Dublin appeared to be awaiting the denouement with an almost stoical calm. According to a London message of the 12th August,

there has not been anything like the intense interest that might be expected in Dublin at the meeting 'of the Dail. With the exception of a full gallery and a small body of police, there was a moderate crowd outside, and the atmosphere was normal. . . . When the Dail assembled "business as usual" was the keynote of the proceedings, Ministers answering questions.

Excitement was, of course, worked up on the eve of the fateful division, but even when the numbers went up the climax proved to be such an anti-climax—or, in plainer English, such a "boil-over"—and was so deeply tinged with humour that the tension was very agreeably eased by laughter. Instead of helping his party to cast the odd vote of democracy against the Cosgrave Government, that very odd man, Mr. John Jinks of Sligo, mysteriously disappeared at the last moment, and in accordance with precedent the tie which resulted was. determined by the Speaker in favour of the Government. Here was the joke for which Mr. Richard Hooker, of the "Springfield Republican," was asking a few years ago—the joke which would travel round a war-weary world and relieve the tension by setting * everybody laughing. Where the tension was severest the laughter was loudest, and Mr. John Jinks gave not only the Government but the people of the Irish Free State a temporary reprieve from their troubles.

But with two by-elections pending —one for the seat of the brave Minister whose murder precipitated this crisis—the reprieve was necessarily very brief. As the result of these contests must be either to prolong the dead heat or to give the Government or its opponents a majority which the aberrations of Mr. Jinks cannot completely destroy, the stakes are so high that the fighting is extraordinarily fierce. Had Mr. John Jinks resigned from the Dail as well as from his party, 1 and faced his constituents again, Sligo wpuld surely from the spectators' standpoint hay far surpassed the two other contests put together. Sligo, with John Jinks up, might have made the Limerick of Thackeray's veracious ballad and even Kilkenny itself look to their laurels. But Mr. Jinks knows a good seat when he has one, and the doubt in which his oracular silence leaves the future course of what the Dublin correspondent calls his "elusive vote" makes him sufficiently important and the position sufficiently uncertain without adding the excitements of a third and record.-breaking by-election to those of the other two. Even without any further help from Mr. Jinks these two appear to be breaking the records already.

The by-elections for Dublin County and South- City are, we were informed yesterday, excitingi tremendous interest, both experiencing a spate of oratory unparalleled even in Irish elections. There are hundreds of meetings daily, even on Sunday.

Can the records of either Ireland or the Empire provide anything to beat these hundreds of meetings daily in two not very large constituencies? The courage in which Mr. Cosgrave has never failed does not appear to be deserting him now. He stood up to that nerve-racking noconfidence motion like a man, and he is evidently facing .the present more harassing ordeal with equalcoolness. One might almost wish that he was a little more ready to temporise. The resolution with which at such a time he declares for the immediate enforcement of the Public Safety Act is enough to take the ordinary politician's breath away. That Act is of a very drastic character, not to be passed except under the apprehension of a grave emergency and not to be, enforced unless the emergency appears to be very, hear. Like the deportation clauses of our own Samoa Amendment Act, Mr. Cosgrave's Public Safety Act is the kind of measure of which the mere passing may justify the hope that its enforcement will be unnecessary. In such a hope Mr. Cosgrave might well find not merely an excuse but a reason against a precipitate enforcement of the Act. The desire to placate opposition at the by-elections would supply the ordinary leader with another argument. The fears of his own followers and the ambiguous position in the Dail would present further difficulties.

Many of the Government's supporters advise to the contrary,'says the Dublin correspondent of the "Times," because there is no longer a Parliamentary majority in favour of the Act, but Mr. Cosgrav") and h.'s colleagues consider that if the Act was sound last week, it is sound to-day,, and they, therefore, must enforce its provisions. ■

If even under such powerful temptation Mr. Cosgrave and his colleagues refuse to recognise that circumstances alter cases, one must at least admire their logic and their courage in a world where so many politicians manage to get along quite comfortably without either.

While Mr. Cosgrave continues to supply the stubbornness which is the main need at such a pinch—and a later message than what we have

quoted indicates that his stubbornness will not be without caution—his colleague, the Minister of Industry, seems to have taken on the hard hitting and to be doing it very well. The "Times" correspondent's description of Mr. M'Gilligan's attack upon the Labour Party as "powerful" is fully borne out by his report. The Minister accused Mr. Johnson, the Labour leader, of having suggested an alliance with the Government under which Mr. de Valera's party, who had not then taken the oath, were to be wiped out, the 51 Republican seats to be declared vacant, and further Republican candidatures to be barred by making the taking of the oath a condition precedent to nomination.

It was stated that if the Government declared these seats vacant, proceeded Mr. M'Gilligan, Labour would get a majority of votes cast for the Eepublicans at the last elections, and vould be returned to the Dail" with a party of fifty. The man who proposed that, said Mr. M'Gilligan, now had the impudence to join the Fianna Fail in signing a demand for the suspension of the Electoral Amendment Act.

The grave charge is denied by Mr. Johnson as "a villainous misrepresentation of the truth." He admits that after the assassination N of Mr. O'Higgins "he assured Mr.. Cosgrave thatl if any such course were necessary to inspire public confidence the Labourites would join an all-party coalition."

Simple human feeling, Mr. Johnson added, prompted this course. We did not contemplate that our sympathy would be spurned and flouted as it has been.

Such is Mr. Johnson's reply as cabled, and if that is all he had to say it cannot be called such an explicit and circumstantial denial as the very ugly charge demanded. We trust that a more satisfactory reply will be forthcoming, for Mr. Johnson is described by the "Round Table's" Irish correspondent as the ablest Parliamentarian in the Dail, and we should be sorry to see him exchanging a coalition with Mr. de Valera for that which he admits that he recently preferred.