IRISH FREE STATE

Southland Times, Issue 25267, 23 April 1935, Page 7

IRISH FREE STATE

REPUBLICAN PARADES MR DE VALERA UNVEILS STATUE INDEPENDENCE ’ CLAIM (United Press Assn.—Telegraph Copyright.) Dublin, April 21. The Easter celebrations were orderly. The Republican flag flew from the Post Office, where Mr de Valera, in unveiling a statue in commemoration of the victims of the 1916 rising, said that the time to erect a proud monument to the inspirers of the Republican movement had not yet arrived, but Ireland would not content herself with anything less than independence. Subsequently Mr de Valera reviewed a parade of 6500 Free State soldiers and volunteers many of the participants in which had fought in 1926. After the review, from which Mr de Valera departed with a cavalry escort, detachments of the Republican Army, headed by bands, marched in a downpour to Glasnevin cemetery where they paid homage at the gravesides of the 1916 victims. Two thousand police and civic guards maintained order in the streets. Maurice Twomey, chief of staff of the Republican Army, who was recently in hiding, reappeared and spoke at Glasnevin surrounded by a bodyguard. He escaped without being pursued. Thomas Green was arrested when attempting to read a Republican Army manifesto to thousands of Republicans who were quietly witnessing the unveiling of a memorial at Roscrea to four Republicans shot in the civil war of 1923. A thousand marched in heavy rain to Navan Cemetery, where the band played the Dead March and the crowd recited the Rosary in Irish. A member of the Republican Army read a message from the Army Council and a barrister extolled Pearce and Connolly. Trumpeters sounded the “Last Post.’ When the police advanced to stop them, a party hoisting Republican flags at Aughagallon, on the shore of Lough Neagh, fired. The police returned the shots and the men scattered. Three were subsequently arrested. Nobody was wounded. Police diligently patrolled Northern Ireland to prevent demonstrations, but 500 men met at the cemetery at Stewartsown in the absence of the police.