IRISH PRESIDENT

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 149, 27 June 1938, Page 3

IRISH PRESIDENT

SYMBOL OF NATION WHAT DE VALERA INTENDS The choice of the patriarch of the Gaelic revival movement to be the first President of Ireland has a fitness both symbolic and real, writes Anne O'Hare McCormick in 'he "New York Times." It is symbolic because if Eamon de Valera is right in believing that you can't have a nation without a national language— though the Irish seem to have done pretty well for themselves in English—then Dr. Douglas Hyde may be the creator of the country called Eire. President of the Gaelic League for nearly a quarter of a century and the first Professor of Modem Irish in the National University, it was he who popularised the almost-forgotten native tongue among the young. He is so steeped in folklore, besides, that he is like the memory of the race. The President of the new State ia meant to be a symbol. The day after the Constitution went into effect last December Mr. de Valera expounded to the writer what he had in mind when he created the office. The President was not to be a figurehead, but an eyecompelling figure out of and above j politics. He was to have no direct | power but great influence, so that his 1 Ministers, while advising him, would also be guided by his advice. As the author of the Constitution conceives him, the Irish Chief Executive is to be less active than the President of the United States and far more important than the President of France. He is to fulfill the functions of an uncrowned king, chosen for his qualities rather than inherited, and therefore with less dynastic but more moral authority. DE VALERA STILL CREATING. Probably Mr. de Valera himself would like to set the pattern for the Presidency. But he has other patterns to set first. Ke has to establish the new balance between the Government and the President; he has to exemplify his idea of the Premiership; he has to chart the course of the untried Senate,, In building a nation according to his own specifications, he is experiencing all the excitement of creation. He is too busy turning a dream into reality to be ready to be a symbol. But Dr. Douglas Hyde represents the real Ireland too. In the first place, he is the first amendment to the new Constitution. Before his charter went into operation Mr. de Valera realised that the President he desired could not be chosen by popular election. He admitted that in the effort to carry democracy to the limit he had almost destroyed the chance of finding a great non-political figure to act as symbolic head of the State. He hoped that all the political parties could be brought to agree on a single candidate, thereby avoiding the necessity of a popular election on party lines. This is what has happened. And the reason the opposing parties have agreed in a country as political as Ireland is because Douglas Hyde expresses something deeper and more real than politics. NO POLITICAL REMARK. The patriarch of a movement but not an elder statesman, he has never been heard to utter a political remark. He talks about things that interest Irishmen more. He is a scholar and a gentleman, old and quiet, full of wit and wisdom. He comes from the most Irish part of Ireland, the Kingdom of Connaught in the west, the country which strains farthest „away from Europe, like the last of the Hesperides. Though the writer never heard this fact mentioned when his name was discussed, he is a Protestant, son of a clergyman; and the most impassioned leaders of Catholic Ireland have been Protestants—lsaac Butt, Wolfe Tone, Robert Emmett, Parnell. His chief recommendation is that he is a man of letters. In a country where you can attend two successive political luncheons, one to meet the leaders of the ruling party, the other to meet the leaders of the opposition, and at both hear Plato and Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas and Dante, quoted as casually and familiarly as if they were lights of the -New Deal or the Fascist Era, it is easy to understand why de Valera and Cosgrave could stand out forever against Sean O'Kelly or Alfey Burns, the political candidates, and unite in an hour on a literary man like Dougles Hyde. The Irish are a literary people. A DREAM. In a Europe where there is no talk for the sake of talk, no room or reason for humour, almost no place where life is lived on the human scale, it is pleasant to turn to Ireland and to think of a President who has lived seventyeight years and never thought of politics. No other State is quite like this misty little outpost in the North Atlantic. Gulfs divide it from Europe and from America. Another gulf, the deepest of all, divides the Twenty-six Counties from the irreconcilable Six. It is an island full of trouble but quick with laughter, poor but magnificently careless of poverty, small but specious. In space it lies somewhere between this world and the next; in time somewhere between the Middle Ages and the Millennium; a sort of dream State ruled by a dr»amer who dreams syllogisms, the Latin working on the Celt, the Celt overcoming the Latin. Dr. Hyde is just the President you'd expect in a lost Atlantis finding itself in a world in which it is not at home. He will live in the old Viceregal Lodge in Phoenix Park, in recent years the residence of the American Minister. He will live regally for an Irishman, to the tune of £15,000 a year, for de Valera insists on a certain grandeur for his symbol. And he will continue in this grandeur to talk philosophy and transcribe the folksongs of the poor.