The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro. MONDAY, OCTOBER 31, 1932. FURTHER CLAIMS

Southland Times, Issue 21851, 31 October 1932, Page 6

The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro. MONDAY, OCTOBER 31, 1932. FURTHER CLAIMS

When the Irish Free State extends its claims it is only enlarging the preposterous ideas on which Mr de Valera based his seizure of the annuities, and the only explanation of the new development is that the republicans are anxious to build a situation that will drive the Imperial Government to some act which can bring the issues to a fighting crisis. From the outset Mr de Valera has been provocative and he has made no secret of the fact. His effort to secure a tribunal from outside the Empire—even only one member—to try the annuities issue was guided by the hope that by taking a purely domestic issue outside the Empire he could induce the Imperial Government to admit tacitly that the Irish Free State was outside of the Empire, or not completely domestic. Since then the effect of the seizure of the annuities has been to bring the Free State farmers close to bankruptcy and one of the unexpected results has been their decision to refuse payment of annuities to the Free State Government. This, of course, is a perfectly logical stand for them to take. The Free State Government has said that Britain has no right to these annuities. Britain raised the money by which the farmers acquired their land and she is responsible .to the bondholders. If she is not entitled to the annual instalments paid by the farmers under their contracts to purchase, the Free State Government certainly has no claim because at no stage were any Irish funds concerned in the transaction. Mr de Valera may set up a general claim that Britain really owes the Free States sums far in excess of the annuities which have been seized, but the shadowy claim advanced by Mr de Valera gives him no right to money to which Britain has a specific right. Mr de Valera has made a general claim in earlier speeches, based on the assumption that Britain never had any right to collect revenue from Ireland, and that part of Britain’s finances in the past were illegally drawn from Ireland. Expenditure in Ireland, he dismissed as being part of Britain’s scheming to subdue Ireland and, therefore, not a charge against any Irish revenue. When the Free State was founded it was generally conceded that the Imperial Government was extremely generous in its financial arrangements. Then it was anxious to placate the opponents of the treaty and to assist the new government. The treaty was adopted by the Dail, in which there was a clear majority for it, after making due allowance for the absence of Mr de Valera’s followers, but the republicans like to argue that the treaty was not ratified. The latest developments are not surprising. They spring from the desperation of a government which has discovered that its acts have hurt Ireland severely without doing England any serious injury. Mr de Valera so far has failed to achieve his purpose, but he is still hoping to keep hatred of England alive in Ireland in order to divert attention from his own blunders.