PRIVATE ARMIES

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 109, 11 May 1933, Page 5

PRIVATE ARMIES

. It is submitted by G. J. Griffin that the article by the Dublin correspondent of the "Christian Science Monitor", on private armies (published on Saturday) conveys an inaccurate impression of the present attitude and. origin of the Irish Republican Army. "When the Four Courts in Dublin were seized the majority of the rank and file of the I.X.A. had agreed on their position and had elected an Army Council which repudiated both the Free State Government and the leadership, ot Mr. de Valera. It adopts precisely the same attitude today. Throughout the article the 'Christian Science' correspondent confuses the political party of Sinn Fein • with the military organisation of the Irish Republican Army. It was An Dail Eireann, then recognised even by the British Government as the official Government body of an Irish Republic, which decided on the issue of the treaty with the results mentioned in the article. In writing of the split that occurred in the Sinn Fein organisation in' 1927, the same confusion is apparent. Mr. de Valera and a minority seceded at that time when his proposals to. participate in the Free State political system were rejected. He then formed the Fianna Fail Party, which today occupies the Government position in the Free State. Republican opinion in Ireland in 1921 rejected the treaty on the ground that it could not be utilised as a stepping-stone to an independent republic. Mr. de Valera and his colleagues played a big part in moulding that opinion. Today the Fianna Fail Party, led by Mr. de Valera, maintains that the Free State can be used as a 'stepping-stone.' The Irish Republican Army has never endorsed such a viewpoint."