DRAMATIC ARRESTS

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 90, 13 October 1923, Page 14

DRAMATIC ARRESTS

INCIDENTS IN IRELAND'S

HISTORY

The arrest of de Valera does not seem to have lacked that dramatic quality generally associated with such events in Irish history, declares the ''Manchester Guardian." The arrest of Parnell had its dramatic side, though there were incidents in connection with it which were decidedly farcical. While Sir Thomas Steele was drafting horse, foot, and artillery into Castle Yard and the police guards were doubled, Parnell was dining quietly with two friends whoso business it was ..to get some instructions from him in case of arrest. "P ," Ea jd one of them afterwards, "kept kicking me under the table to go on, and I kept hming and hawing, and beating about the bush. But there was a dramatic moment when at last the question was put, ."Who will take your place " Ah. replied Parnell, looking at the glass of champagne he was raisin"- to his' lips, "if I am arrested, Captain Moonlight will take my place." Actually he was arrested quite quietly in his bedroom. He and two detectives drove off in a cab; they were joined near the Bank of Ireland by six policemen with two cars, and later some horse police brought up the rear, but it was not an imposing procession which entered Kilmainham. The dramatic side to the ar rest of O'Connell, 1831, was in the anxiety of those who carried it out. "I am just come," wrotes Anglesey to his wife, "from a consultation of six hours with the law officers, the result of which is a determination to arrest O'Connell for things are now come to that pass that the question is whether he or I shall govern Ireland."

There was sheer tragedy in the arrest of Lord Edward Fitzgerald in a house in Thomas street, Dublin. "Swan and Ryan entered the room together and summoned Lord Edward to surrender but he made a bold attempt to escape and killed Captain Ryan with a dagger on the spot. Before, however, he could well disengage himself from the dyinf man Swan threw himself upon him and pinioned him round the body; and Sirr who had been standing at the door during the conflict, shot him throuah the body jvith a pistol."