GOVERNMENT ON THE RUN

Evening Star, Issue 19550, 7 May 1927, Page 22

GOVERNMENT ON THE RUN

IRELAND'S BLACK DAYS RECALLED DE VALERA'S CLAIM TO FUNDS [From Our Special' Correspondent.] SAN FRANCISCO, March 31. A picture of an Irish temporary Government, whose offices moved their headquarters with the suddenness of New York night club proprietors—three jumps ahead of the raiders—was presented in court in New York. The occasion was the suit of the Irish Free State to determine the ownership of the 2,500,000 dollars balance of a six million dollar fund raised by the Irish Republic several years ago in the United States and deposited in New York. “The departments and department heads of the Sinn Fein revolution were the objects of constant search by the British Government,” William C. Cannon, representing the Irish Free State, asserted. <( Consequently it was necessary to have offices and equipment of the most portable’character.” In continuing, reading from the testimony given at a trial in 1924 by Hugh Kennedy, Attorney-General of the Free State Government, it was stated: “It was frequently necessary for a Ministry to bo hurriedly removed through a skylight or down a drainpipe, and it was seldom that the Ministry could depend on more than one night’s rest in a particular spot.” Earaon de Valera, Bepuhlican loader, was in the courtroom, together with almost as many attorneys, representing both sides, as there were spectators.

A denunciation of do Valera, received by cablegram in New York by the International Broadcasting Corporation from William T. Cosgrave, President of the Irish Free State, was so vehement that the corporation’s board of directors eliminated parts of it before sending it out on the St. Patrick air all over the United States. In the nncensorcd message President Cosgrave was quoted as declaring that an insane campaign of destruction waged by the ox-President of the former Irish Republic had co f st the Irish Free State hundreds of millions of dollars in money and material. He spoke of “Air de Valera’s dupes, who, in tho name of freedom, strained every , nerve to deprive their country of life and liberty ” The characteristics of endurance and patience inculcated into the Irish people by adversity have borne fruit, and the country not only has survived, but has prospered under the Government of the Irish Free State, tho President said.