A STORMY PETREL.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19254, 19 August 1924, Page 6

A STORMY PETREL.

The release of Mr do Vulera from imprisonment is interpreted by him as a license to resume his occupation as a mischief-maker. The speech which he delivered at Ennis last week is significant of his determination to place himself once more at the head of the forces in Ireland that are bent on creating trouble and of plunging that land into the miseries of internecine strife. His objective is not merely the establishment of a republic in Ireland, -but one of constituting the whole of Ireland into a republic. ‘'The sovereignty of Ireland,” be says, “is impossible without union.” That means that Ulster, according to his plan, is to be compelled to unite with the Free State in the formation of an independent nation, which is not to yield allegiance to any “foreign Power,” the “foreign Power” particularly indicated in this instance being Great Britain. Mr de Valera’s pretensions are precisely of the kind that threaten his adopted country with serious disaster. Whatever expectations the Sinn Fein clement may be justified in entertaining respecting the success of Republican propaganda in the Free State, it should be as obvious to those who compose it as it is to everyone else that it is perfectly idle to imagine that Ulster will throw off her allegiance to Great Britain and join the Free State in establishing a republic of All Ireland. It would only bo by forcible coercion that Ulster could be brought into a union of that character, and Mr do Valera’s speech amounts, in effect, to a declaration that war must be made, sooner or later, upon Ulster in order to compel her to renounce her allegiance to Groat Britain, his assumption being that the Free State will certainly embrace Republicanism. We should have supposed that Ireland had had sufficient experience of the horrors of internal strife when it is accompanied by military operations to bo wholly averse from any abandonment of the conditions of peace and comparative security of life and property that are now enjoyed by her, and that she would be eager to Utilise the opportunity afforded to her to work out her destiny under the forms of government which have been conferred upon her. Mr de Valera thinks differently, however, and to the extent to which he is able to obtain public support and sympathy in that measure will the future of the country be clouded and her prosperity menaced. •