SITUATION IN IRELAND

Waikato Times, Volume 93, Issue 14494, 18 October 1920, Page 5

SITUATION IN IRELAND

ULBTER CIVIL GUARD ORQANI9ED.

ALSO SECRET SERVICE STAFF,

MAGISTRATES KIDNAPPED.

(Australian and N.Z. Cable Assn.) Received October 16, 5.35 p.m. LONDON, October 15.

The organisation of the Ulster Civil Guard is nearly complete. It comprises two paid classes of permanent and occasional police and an unlimited number of unpaid volunteers. Practically all the guard are ex-service men and members of the Ulster Volunteers. A secret service staff Is also being organised to combat Die secret activities of the Sinn Fein. It will be mainly exofficers.

Mr Moore, the presiding magistrate at Mullingcr, and Mr Hyde, a justice of the peace, while motoring to the petty sessions were kidnapped by masked men, and their whereabouts are unknown. £IOOO REWARD OFFERED. KIDNAPPED OFFICIALS RELEASED. 'Australian and N.Z. Cable Assn.) Received October 17, 11.5 p.m. LONDON, October IT. A reward of £IOOO has been offered for information resulting in the arrest of the Sinn Fein general, Daniel Bree.-i, aged 27, formerly a labourer, who is described as the commandant of the 3rd Tipperary Brigade of the Republican Army, also a fanatic of sulky appearance and leader, of a gang specialising in murderous outrages. Breen is wanted on several charges of murder, including that of Major Smyth, when Breen escaped by Jumping from a window to a greenhouse, Injuring his legs. It is believed that Breen is hiding in England. ' Following a threat of reprisals the Sinn Feiners released, uninjured' .Messrs Moore and Hyde.

ENFORCING SINN FEIN CLAIMS. CHARGES AGAINST POLICE. (Australian and N.Z. Cable Assn.) Received October 18, 12.15 a.m. I. LONDON, October 17. A defendant in Clare County, fur ' refusing to pay a Sinn Fein claim, was j shut in a vault, containing five coffins, ! and terrorised into compliance. A Cork telegram states that the Ausuabary police draged Lenane, a I civilian of Ballymakiery, from his j home, put him against a fence, and shot him dead. The military and auxiliary police ! thrice raided the premises of Peter O'Carroll, an invalid shopkeeper in Dublin in search for his two sons, who, however, were sleeping elsewhere. Another raid, attributed to the same parties, occurred on Saturday, when O'Carroll was killed, a paper being fastened to his clothes inscribed, "A traitor to Ireland; shot by the 1.R.A." LATER. FULL (MEASURE OF HOME RULE. THE PERILS OF A CIVIL WAR. (Australian and N.Z. Gable Assn.) Received October i.S, 1-2.45 a.m. LONDON, October 17. Mr Winston Churchill, Secretary of State for War, at Dundee, said it would be madness to put ourselves at the mercy of such terrorists as De Valera and his gang of murderers, whom we were assuredly going to break up absolutely and utterly. The Tories and Liberals had fortunately joined together, making a full measure of Home Hole practically certain. Were North and South Ireland left to light out their own differences there would be a most terrible civil war on an organised scale. Sympathy in Britain in that case would be developed in favour of Protestant Ulster, Influential persons in the United Stales sympathised with the south, and while volunteers left Britain for Ulster reinforcements would conic from the 1 niteii Slates for the South. This would create such tension that it would expose us to the greatest dangers with which we could be confronted—a quarrel between ourselves and the United States. It would be better to tolerate the present lamentable situation for two years more than to leave Ireland to herself, thus opening the floodgates of organised war, and later embroiling us with the United States.