De Valera’s Aim

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 88, 7 January 1933, Page 16

De Valera’s Aim

“There is no price which Mr. de Valera is not prepared to pay for national independence'. Economic laws have no meaning for him. This being so, it will be appreciated that the tariff war now raging lias no tertors for the President, whatever it may have for his fellow-countrymen. Indeed, he rather welcomes the war, for it adds the spur of compulsion to the standard nationalistic arguments for his Plan.

“He is in the happy position of being able both to explain to the disgruntled stock-breeders that it is owing to English oppression that they can no longer sell their cattle, and thus to add fuel to the flame of hatred of the historic enemy; and at the same time to urge that for this reason, if for no other, it is in their own interests to make his Plan operative as quickly as possible. “Indeed, it seems by no means improbable that the President deliberately provoked the present quarrel over the Land Annuities in order to further his Plan, that he has no interest in seeking the determination of the tariff war, and that if his latest way of provoking action on the part of our Government had failed, he would have tried another. This is an aspect of the situation which is not generally appreciated, and it is of some importance.”—“Hibernicus,” in the “Contemporary Review.”