OUTLAWED ARMY

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21579, 5 December 1944, Page 3

OUTLAWED ARMY

I.R.A. RE-ORGANISING DE VALERA’S DILEMMA WARNING fo" THE IRISH (9 a.m.) 'LONDON, Dec. 4. The Prime Minister of Eire, Mr. Eamound de Valera, is facing a new ancl determined bid in Eire to reorganise the outlawed Irish Republican Army, states the Daily Mail. Members of the I.R.A. recently obtained £15,000 from the robbery of a post office and a British tobacco firm both in Dublin. Eire Civil Guards are hunting I.R.A. leaders, and already have arrested 20 key men who were attempting to organise demonstrations in Dublin.

It is feared that the movement has secret arms dumps, and also is endeavouring to secure tommy-guns. Members of the Eire Cabinet believe that efforts to obtain a reprieve for Charles Kerins, who was sentenced to death for the murder of DetectiveSergeant Denis O'Brien, are a cloak for I.R.A. recruiting. The police moved on people who knelt in Hie heart of Dublin to pray for Kerins, and also broke up a demonstration in one Dublin street by a baton charge in which a number were injured.

Mr. de Valera has meanwhile appealed to parents not to allow their children to join the 1.R.A., and has warned them that once they have enrolled they would find it difficult to get out, because they would be threatened by guns. He recalled releasing a member of the I.R.A. who was near death as a result of hungerstriking. The man recovered and killed six persons within a year.

“I then learned a lesson which., I am not forgetting as long as I am a member of the Executive. Let there be reprisals if there will, but while we are here we will carry out the law fairly and justly,” he added.