EASTER DOINGS IN FREE STATE

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXIX, Issue 20090, 23 April 1935, Page 7

EASTER DOINGS IN FREE STATE

IRELAND AIMS AT INDEPENDENCE MEMORIALS TO 1916 RISING United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copy righ t DUBLIN, April 21. The Easter celebrations were orderly. The. Republican flag was flown from the Post Office where Mr E. de Valera, President of the Irish Free State, unveiled a statue in commemoration of the victims of the 1916 rising. He said that the time to erect a proud monument to the inspirers of the Republican movement had not arrived, but Ireland would not content herself with anything less than independence. Subsequently Mr de Valera reviewed a parade of 6500 Irish Free State soldiers and volunteers and many participants who fought in 1916. 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 of rain to Glasnevin cemetery where they paid homage at the graves 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 cemetery, where he was surrounded by a bodyguard. He escaped without being pursued. Thomas Green was arrested at Newry cemetery when attempting to read a Republican Army manifesto to thousands of Republicans who were quietly witnessing the unveiling of the memorial at Roscrea to four Republicans who were shot in the civil war In 1923. Republicans Active Thousands marched in heavy rain to the Navan Cemetery. 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, a barrister extolled Pearce and Connolly, and trumpeters sounded “Last Post.”

When the police advanced to stop them, a party who were hoisting Republican flags at Aughagallon on the shore of Lough Neagh, fired on the police, who returned the shots. The men scattered and three were subsequently arrested. Nobody was wounded. The police diligently patrolled Northern Ireland to prevent demonstrations, but 500 men met at the cemetery at Stewartstown in the absence of police.