THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS MONDAY, OCTOBER 17, 1932 ANGLO-IRISH NEGOTIATIONS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21315, 17 October 1932, Page 8

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS MONDAY, OCTOBER 17, 1932 ANGLO-IRISH NEGOTIATIONS

There is every indication that the negotiations just concluded resultlessly in London were not entered by Mr. de Valera with any desire for friendly discussion. It is extremely unlikely that either he or Mr. Thomas will have anything fresh to report to their respective Parliaments. To all appearances the request for a further conference on the land-purchase annuities was proposed by him in the hope of gaining an additional reason for telling the people of the Free State that the British Government is entirely to blame for their troubles. It is reported that he advanced no new arguments beyond an absurd claim concerning the purport of one of the treaty and was insistent in objecting as heretofore to the British proposal for arbitration. He is unmoved by the suffering imposed upon the Irish people; instead, he seeks to turn this to political account. At the outset he told them they must be prepared to make great sacrifices for the cause of republican independence, and he is evidently bent on proving the truth of his words, staging this futile conference in order to intensify their resentment and determination. Signs of weakening in popular support, it seems, have made him anxious about the outcome of the struggle; some Labour voices have been raised in criticism of his obduracy, and hesitation to carry out his instructions about the annuities has been expressed by some under private obligation to pay them. To rally the waverei-s has become a tactical necessity, lest lie be thrust from office ; and no way offers but the production of some proof—whether it is valid does not matter much—that he is in the right and the British Government in the. wrong. Assuming sincerity in his motives, his conduct is that of an unpractical visionary, so intent on making Southern Ireland entirely selfjgoverning that it is of no moment whether at the end of the fight there is any Southern Ireland left with means to govern itself. Economic ruin is being courted; of that there is abundant evidence. The situation has been summarised by Mr. Cosgrave as good politics but bad law and worse morals. He condemns as "legal chicanery" any attempt to shelter behind quibbleß about the treaty, and declares that no hope lies along the line of legal argument for the Free State's retention of the annuities. He knows, as head of the State until Mr. de Valera'6 coming to office, all that is to be known on the matter. The successive Governments —from the Provisional Government to that which preceded Mr. de Valera's—were all fully satisfied, after careful consideration and with the guidance of the most competent legal opinion available, that the annuities payable by tenant purchasers under Land Purchase Acts before the treaty were legally applicable, and only applicable, in discharge of interest and sinking-fund payments on land stock representing the advances made to the tenant purchasers. Any offort to divert them is contrary to Free State law. The treaty did not alter the position. Repudiation of that agreement, even a claim that any of its provisions is interpretable as conferring a title to British assets, must fail as irrelevant. Quite independently of the treaty, Free State Governments, until this advocacy of non-payment of the annuities was begun by Mr. de Valera for political purposes, have acknowledged and implemented their obligation. Mr. Thomas has cited the so-called "secret agreement" of 1923 —secret only in the usual sense, applicable to all documents passing between the Irish and British Governments, of precluding publication without prior notice—by which the British Government undertook an annual liability of. nearly £1,000,000, borne ever since by the British taxpayer, in respect of bonus and excess stock charges, and incidentally saved the Irish taxpayer the considerable cost of a new department of State. This agreement was embodied subsequently in the Land Purchase Act of that year. No shift of Mr. de Valera can be of any avail to give an emergency exit by way of the treaty. Not only is the Free State bound by its own law in this respect: there is the irrefutable moral obligation. It is base ingratitude to attempt evasion. The British taxpayer, through his Government, came to the aid of the Free State, and the whole scheme of the land annuities was designed to serve the Irish tenant farmers. Further, there was a happening in 1925 that should have foreclosed for ever any complaint about the annuities, even if they had been a burden instead of a benefit. At that time, by a specific agreement, the Free State was freed from its share of liability for debts incurred in the Great War, on Mr. Cosgrave's plea that its Government was paying the land annuities, many oil them representing uneconomic holdings, and was not able to undertake any further liability. The position might be altered, of course, by an international agreement to wipe out all war debts, but until then the Free State is morally bound not to raise this aspect of the matter. It is not surprising, therefore, that Mr. de Valera is at a loss for argument. He is just as obviously wrong in adhering to his protest against an Imperial tribunal of arbitration. The League has pointedly declined to regard Anglo-Irish relations as a subject of international concern, and declared the treaty a purely domestic document. It has become especially pertinent, since the Free State's participation at Ottawa, to ask what ground there is for objecting to an Imperial tribunal in other domestic matters. But Mr. de Valera is a law unto himself in logical and moral as well as legal considerations. His attitude threatens tragic results for the Free State;