Too Much Trouble

Ireland's boiling-hot debate over Britain's proposal to conscript Northern Irelanders was judged last week by Winston Churchill.

Chief debater against conscription was neutral Eire's gaunt Prime Minister Eamon de Valera. Said he to a jammed session of the Dail Eireann: "The six counties [of Northern Ireland] are a part of Ireland. . . . No act of Parliament can alter this fact. In the six northern counties there are more than a third of the population who have vehemently protested against being cut off from the main body of the nation, who were so cut off against their own will and against the will of the majority of the whole Irish people. It would be an outrage to compel them to fight in the forces of another country which has done them and continues to do them grievous wrong."

Chief debater for conscription was Northern Ireland's Prime Minister John Miller Andrews. Said he of Prime Minister de Valera's speech: "In my opinion this was unwarrantable interference. Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom; its constitutional position has been clearly defined and established by statute. Therefore, all matters connected with Northern Ireland are completely outside the jurisdiction of the Eire Government. . . . On behalf of the Government of Northern Ireland I repudiate the claim of Mr. de Valera to speak in the name of the people of this area."

In judging the debate, Winston Churchill scarcely listened to the words spoken. Instead, he paid attention to steady reports that conscription in Northern Ireland would be met by shooting resistance from North Ireland Catholics, Laborites, Nationalists in general. Finally, Prime Minister Churchill pronounced in favor of the negative: "Although there can be no dispute about our rights or the merits of the case, it would be more trouble than it is worth to enforce such a policy."

This was good horse sense. Out of Ulster's 1,279,745 people the British draft could not expect to get more than about 50,000 soldiers.

But sharp wartime pains refused to leave Eire. Scarcely had Prime Minister de Valera heard the good news about Ulster conscription than he had another emergency on his hands. For the third time during World War II, neutral Dublin was bombed.

This time unknown planes droned for two dark hours above the city, which kept up anti-aircraft fire, before anything dropped. Then four bombs fell, killing 34, injuring 120, leaving 500 homeless. This week Dublin identified bomb fragments as German, protested to Berlin, which had acknowledged bombings of Eire. Dublin police suspected, as before, that Nazi planes had been lost over Eire, that the bombing had been a murderous form of jettison.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.