The Evening Star MONDAY, MAY 2, 1932. IRELAND AND THE OATH.

Evening Star, Issue 21091, 2 May 1932, Page 6

The Evening Star MONDAY, MAY 2, 1932. IRELAND AND THE OATH.

By 77 votes to 71 Mr De Valera has secured the passage of the second reading of his Bill for the abolition of the Irish Oath of Allegiance, and it seems to follow that he is in a position to get the Bill completely passed by the Pail. The Senate is a different matter. That body, it has been said, is predominantly constitutional, and is very unlikely to remain passive in face of uncontitutional measures. In the event of the Senate showing the opposition to the measure which is generally expected from it, its powers will enable it to delay the Bill for eighteen months, unless the Government should decide to go to the country on the issue. If the Government should do that and he returned to office, the Senate s power of delay would be limited to sixty days. It would bo a new thing for the Senate to take such action against a Bill, but the probability of its doing so in this case is directly envisaged by Mr Pe Valera himself. In the event of such opposition being made to his designs, he states that his Government will “ at some stage ” appeal to the people. How soon that stage will be will doubtless depend on his own zeal,for the measure, which for the sake of a shadowy principle threatens to impose nothing hut disadvantages on the Free State’s people, the zeal of his colleagues, and the extent to which they may he pushed by irreconcilable bodies, like the Irish Republican Army, outside the Government. Mr De Valera probably speaks truly for himself when he says that hostility to Great Britain forms no part of the motive of the Oath Bill. Ho is that kind of visionary. It would be preposterous, however, for the statement to be applied to members of the Republican Army and other organisations, lately under a ban, which have supported his party, or to some members of his Cabinet. The motive of the measure for them is certainly hate, and that is almost the worst principle on which a new nation could be founded. The Irish Premier’s logic in supporting his Bill is impossible to follow. He says that he is putting it forward because his word has been given so to do; but what about his country’s word ? Mr De Valera certainly did not sign the treaty, in which the oath is included, but Mr- Griffith, Mr Michael Collins, and three of their colleagues signed it, and it was confirmed by Dail Eireann as well as by the British Parliament." The question of the Free State remaining in the British Commonwealth is not at present at issue, he explains. Tho.natural effect of repudiation of the treaty would be to put the Free State bade in the position which it occupied, before that agreement was made, as part of the United Kingdom in armed rebellion against its sovereignty. Resumption of that status would not be agreeable to either Great Britain or the Irish Free State. The alternative is that repudiation should be overlooked and that the Free State should continue as a dominion. But a dominion that baulks at the King would be a misfit in the British family of nations. No provision exists for it, or could exist, since the King is the symbol of the family’s unity. The dominion that wajs not content to remain in the Empire on

those terras could only be recognised, apparently, as putting itself outside it. If that is not the immediate wish of Mr De Valera, it is the impatient wish of many of his supporters. At a mass gathering held on College Green to welcome the political prisoners who were released by the present Government when it came into office, all the speakers declared that the extreme Republican movement would pursue its aims with the utmost vigour until independence was achieved. Mr Sean Magennis, a former member of the Bail, who himself had been a prisoner, advised all young Republicans to join Saor Eire as their best hope of achieving “ real freedom.” The objects of Saor Eire are officially declared to be to organise and consolidate the “ republic of, Ireland ” on a mainly Communistic basis.” But, as the attitude of the Senate is expected to stand, and as other matters stand, the question of the oath is unlikely to be settled by Irishmen with any drastic haste. Mr De Valera will have many other troubles. He and his Ministers, it has been said, during the election campaign made not a few rash promises, the fulfilment of which is likely to occupy their undivided attention for many months to come. They have undertaken to find lucrative work , for some 80,000 workers, they have promised to reduce taxation, and to make a dozen other reforms which .were quite beyond the capacity of Mr Cosgrave’s Government. When Mr M'Entee, the new Finance Minister, introduces his first Budget he will be faced with a substantial deficit, with a prospect of an even heavier deficit twelve months hence, and the general financial situation is such as to demand the closest scrutiny. The oath should appear, in those circumstances, very far from an urgent matter.