NEUTRAL EIRE

New Zealand Herald, Volume 82, Issue 25203, 16 May 1945, Page 7

NEUTRAL EIRE

BRITISH CRITICISM DE VALERA TO BROADOAST (Reed. 6.10 p.m.) LONDON, May 15 The Prime Minister of Eire, Mr de Valera, will broadcast tomorrow night. It will be recalled that Mr de Valera was criticised by Mr Churchill for his attitude when the U-boat war against Britain was at its height. The Manchester Guardian, in a leading article referring to the lifting of the Eire censorship, states that Eire's neutrality has not ended "any more than our war is over, but already that unhappy country is beginning to throw off some of her self-imposed shackles. Censorship Castigated "Intellectual freedom never ranked high in modern Irish political thought," the newspaper adds, "but it can never have ranked lower than since Eire declared herself neutral in this war." ■ The article castigates "the pettifogging censorship rules," in which, it says, Mr de Valera went far beyond what was required of him in suppressing news of European happenings. "Belligerent propaganda" ' was the label attached to any inconvenient fact that Eire's Government chose to keep from the citizens. The article congratulates the Irish Times, "after working in conditions of unspeakable humiliation for years," for celebrating the new freedom by publishing a list of Irish Y.C.'s. It concludes: "This will hardly impress the diehards, but may help Eire's people to realise tliey have- been led blindfold through a period of history which might have brought their young nation fame instead of shame." Deliberate Anglophobia Eire's only Sunday newspaper, The Sunday Independent, referring to the war-time censorship, says that relations between Britain and Eire have been steadily worsening. "Hatred of England lias been kept, alive in Eire by an educational system directed toward political ends." it states. "The new generation, which have never seen a British soldier, are more rancorous than their fathers have ever been. That hatred has become somewhat distorted and dangerous only to ourselves. It has ceased to be patriotic and becomes Anglophobia, and, aa everything reaches us only through England, it becomes hatred of the outside world," The newspaper advocates better relations "if only for selfinterest." The newspaper says it wrote to the censors, protesting that previously an article headed "Rommel's great generalship" had not been stopped. Only a formal acknowledgment was received.