EIRE’S NEW ERA

Greymouth Evening Star, 31 December 1937, Page 7

EIRE’S NEW ERA

MR DE VALERA’S STATEMENT. [RY CABLE—PRESS ASSN. —COPYRIGHT.] LONDON, December 30. “We seek to injure no other nation or people. We want nothing that is not ours by every title of justice and of right,” said Mr de Valera, in a broadcast statement on the new Constitution. He hoped that under the new regime the country would have a new life, with peaceful order and progress, in friendship with its neighbours and other nations, and that the unity of national territory would be restored. He added: “The Constitution isi framed on the basis of the full international personality of the Irish Free State and while some mattery may be deemed of mutual interest or common, concern, it is untrammelled by any commit[nent whatever in the domain of our external affairs.” Extreme Republican groups held a mass meeting in Dublin. They passed a resolution condemning the Constitution as “a bogus instrument subversive to the Republic and designed to perpetuate a partition based on British law, as amended and interpreted by the Statue of-Westminster, accepting the King of England as the King of Ireland and! allowing him to dominate foreign policy. It does not abolish the Treaty and it does not break the connexion with England.” A speaker at another meeting, calling on the people to combine against the enlistment of young Irishmen in the British Army, declared: “De Valera and his Party have done more damage to the Irish Republic than Billy Cosgrave ever did.” OVERSEAS SAFEGUARDS. LONDON, December 30. The “Manchester Guardian” in a leading article says: “De Valera’s insistence on setting up his shadow’ constitution for hypothetical unity is annoying without doubt and probably politically unwise; but it has no practical value. When an attempt is made to extend its jurisdiction new problems will arise. We can be fairly sure that whatever our own Government might wish the Dominions would be against anything that might prejudice them.”