Aches and Pains

Like a boil on Britain's elbow is highly vulnerable, belligerently neutral Eire, too close for comfort across the Irish Sea. Like a carbuncle on Eire's neck are the six counties of Northern Ireland. Last week both ached and pained like fury.

The ache in Northern Ireland came from the thought of conscription. Presumably because of pressure from Eire, Britain so far has drafted none of her loyal Irish subjects, but last week Winston Churchill broadly hinted in the House of Commons that conscription for Northern Ireland might be on the way. To arms against bearing arms sprang Northern Ireland Catholics (one-third of the six counties' 1,300,000 population), Laborites, even a section of Prime Minister John Miller Andrews' loyal Unionist Party. In Eire's Dail Prime Minister de Valera this week scolded: "There could be no more grievous attack on any fundamental human right than the plan to force an individual to fight for a country to which he objected to belong." It is a strange war indeed in which Irishmen do not want to fight.

What pained Eire most last week was incipient hunger. Rationed already to a beggarly half an ounce of tea a week, and with white bread scarce, Eire is faced with even stricter rationing until harvest time, unless she can get wheat and foodstuffs that she has purchased in the U.S.

Last week President Roosevelt promised to sell or lease two ships to Eire to carry her food home. But, said Eire's Defense Minister Frank Aiken, at least twelve ships would be needed to get the food across the ocean in "reasonable time."

In this interchange, some observers thought they saw a crack in Eire's isolation. Though shrewd onetime Schoolmaster Eamon de Valera has turned down all Britain's offers for bases in Eire, they thought he might be persuaded to horse-trade with the friendly U.S.

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