THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS WEDNESDAY, JULY 7, 1937 IRISH ELECTION RESULTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22774, 7 July 1937, Page 12

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS WEDNESDAY, JULY 7, 1937 IRISH ELECTION RESULTS

Neither Mr. de Valcra's Government nor his new Constitution has received much more than bare endorsement by vote of the Irish Free State people. The general election and referendum returns are still incomplete, but can now be accepted as offering a fair indication of the final results. Mr. de Valera has won 67 of the 130 seats so far decided in the Dail of 138 members. He cannot yet reckon on a working majority and may once again have to woo the Labour Party for support. Incidentally, Labour is the only party to improve its position in spite of the fact that the number of constituencies was reduced by 15. If it should hold the balance of power in the new Dail, the Labour leaders are not likely to forget howMr. de Valera used their votes and snubbed their demands after the last elections in 1932. Taught by a galling experience, they are bound to make firmer terms on this occasion. Incidentally, there are clauses in the new Constitution which they will probably feel it necessary to repudiate. Thus Mr. de Valera's "perfect and permanent" instrument of government appears to be already in jeopardy. He himseif cannot feel emboldened at the heavily qualified verdict he has received from the people. He held all the political cards, heading the Government in power at a time of recovery, and presenting a clear-cut national policy and a brand-new Constitution that catered for all the supposed Irish aspirations and prejudices. He had even reduced and rearranged the constituencies in a manner supposed to favour his party and had abolished the special representation of the universities in the Dail in order to subtract from the Opposition. The result is anything but impressive. Mr. Cosgrave's United Ireland Party, the backbone of the Opposition, has polled better than was expected. It has won 44 seats and may still be returned numerically as strong as in the last Dail, in which it held 48 seats. That would be a real gain in the reduced House. Even to have held its ground would have been an achievement in view of the handicaps under which the party has laboured. It does not possess a well-defined policy, it has suffered from important defections, it is still a target for ridicule over its monumental error in electing General O'Duffy its leader, it lacks organisation and money, and has had to whip up enthusiasm. Mr. Cosgrave can therefore take encouragement from the election results and work to consolidate his party and policy against the next occasion. It is at least quite clear that the people are not inescapably tied to Mr. de Valera and would probably welcome a sound alternative. His thin hold on the electorate is well brought out in the voting on the new Constitution. The figures to date show a majority of only five to four in favour of separatism and republicanism. A more decisive verdict should be obtained for such a fundamental change. A binding political document like the new Constitution should not be accepted against the express will of four out of every nine of the people. Mr. de Valera has promulgated it as the Constitution that will stand without change in an all-Ireland Republic. All the world can see now, however, that if it had been submitted to an all-Ireland vote the new Constitution would have been rejected. The electors of Belfast and the six counties of Northern Ireland would have made rejection certain. The lukewarmness of the Free Staters themselves to the new Constitution may be due to a growing realisation that workaday economics are more important than abstract politics. It is one thing to quarrel with the "ancient enemy" in government, and another to alienate Ireland's one important customer. The "ancient enemy" is no more than a shadow in the new light of Irish political freedom. Of more disturbing import is the fact that the last census showed the Free State's population to be declining while that of Northern Ireland increased. Although Mr. de Valera aims at Utopia, emigration from his ideal State continues, >and is directed, of all places, to Ulster and to Britain. More than 23,000 of the Free State's young men crossed St. George's Channel in one year to find in Britain the work and the careers denied them in the Free State. This judgment of youth on their future under Mr. de Valera's economy is more ominous than any other. A Government that cannot staunch the bleeding national arteries has failed, however many new Constitutions it may write and however far it may divorce itself from the British Commonwealth of Nations. The divorce with Ulster will be made permanent and absolute under the new Constitution, and the Free State, one of the Mother Nations of the British Empire, will also cut herself off from her kith and kin—her children—numbered in millions in Britain and the Dominions. Her absence from the Imperial Conference was a bitter foretaste of this tragic family division. Must she now follow Mr. de Valera further into the wilderness of nai'row nationalism and isolation to satisfy old grudges? For the present it would seem so, but Holy Writ shows how more than once the wilderness taught lessons of wisdom and love.