IRELAND TO-DAY.

Taranaki Daily News, 25 September 1924, Page 3

IRELAND TO-DAY.

A GLOOMY OUTLOOK. POVERTY AND REPUBLICANISM. 1 & Belfast, August 6. At time of mailing, the muddle over the Boundary Commission seems no nearer a clearing up. On this side of the border, no chances are being taken by the Loyalists. The entire line is well guarded, experts in machine-gun work occupy tire strategical points, and the special constabulary, as well as the regular force, is eonsit-antly patrolling by day and night. In the past few weeks, special trained machine gun parties have been placed near weak spots, or places very difficult to place permanent barriers ov«r, and on the Fermanagh border temporary roads and bridges are being hastily constructed to prevent the cutting off of the Loyalists of certain areas after the regular troops iiavfe been withdrawn by the .Bri'tiish Government from the lieleek section of the border. Altogether the situation is grave.

Apart from the Ulster boundary question—in which lie the germs of a fierce civil war between' North and South —the general condition of the South and West at the moment of mailing is very far from reassuring. Since the release of Mr. De Valera, he has flitted about from South to West, and from West to South, preaching a kind of “Holy War” against Ulster, which he declares must be “blasted out of the war” of Ireland’s progress to a republic. He declares the republic will be in full operation in 1925. Unfortunately, the economic conditions of the South and West are so desperate that the youth of the country will readily listen to any schemes which will give them money, food and excitement. The farmers are faced with a big failure of their crops, consequent on the cold and wet spring and the wettest summer on record; the turf crop has been practically lost in the flooded bogs; potato blight has set in very early, and already food prices are soaring in anticipation of a shortage in flour, meal and potatoes. Money is very scarce, unemployment has one-third of the male population in its grip; the cry of “starvation” is already heard from the West and Donegal. All round the prospects of the winter of 1924-25 are black and grim. And there is now no charitable I England to stand between .the people and their poverty with doles, food ana cropping seed in times of scarcity. The Government loan was only a drop in the bucket, anti at least the sum of L 100,000,000 is needed to set Ireland—that is. the south and West—financially on her feet. Where is it to come from?

Already the population are groaning under a taxation very mu-ch heavier than their Ulster neighbours, who ara bearing it lightly, paying their way, and saving money on their estimates. The contrast is so marked that it has roused the deepest hatred on the Southern side of the border. Hence, De Valera is driving Cosgrave, Cosgrave is driving MacDonald, and MacDonald is driving Parliament for the amending legislation that will give the Irish Free State nearly 2,000,000 additional acres for taxation 1 purposes, and under the economic condition to be thus raised to eventually drive all North-east Ulster under the rule of the Dublin Parliament. Ulster can live and prosper with six counties; she could not with four. The loss of Tyrone and Fermanaga would leave her ruined in population and finance.

This very week Cosgrave informed the British Cabinet that if the Irish Free State demand for the inclusion of Tyrone and Fermanagh were not conceded the South and West would go republican. As it is already that, the fact of it going officially so would not alter matters one jot. The question, however, that would anise would be: Cun England afford to have a hostile republic on her most vulnerable flank ? Meantime, everything points to an .limed outburst against Cosgrave in the South and West in the near future. Since the release of De Valera, who was spared by both the British Government and the Irish Government, when both executed with un spa ring hands his dupes and tools, tue youths of the West and South have taken to drill openly, well armed with rifles and bayonets and equipped w-ith machine guns, too. In Mayo, Galway, Roscommon, Clark. Cork and Kerry, and as near Dublin as Meath, thousands of young fellows, wjho would be better employed saving the remnants of the crops, may be seen daily drilling under the very noses of the Free State troops. The insurgents, for that is what they really are, are making no secret of their intention to overthrow Oosgrave’s Government and declaire an Alle Ireland Republic, and to follow that up a combined attack on the North.