Dail Doings

In the dark of an Irish moon, last week, "soldiers" of the irregular "Irish Republican (Sinn Fein) Army" cut with a twang many a telegraph wire and thereafter indulged in ugly rioting near military barracks in five Irish Free State counties. . . . Next day Mary McSwiney, sister of the Lord Mayor of Cork who in 1920 committed suicide by hungerstriking, made known that these riots had been staged by her Sinn Fein associates as an awful warning to the Dail Eireann. The Dail convened last week with the Sinn Fein Deputies absenting themselves as usual.

President (Premier) William T. Cosgrave declared before the Dail: "We have to deal with an organized conspiracy to subvert the Government, but the force behind the raids and the genius directing them will not be able to make a sustained attack on liberty, order and peace in the Irish Free State." He then introduced the Public Safety Bill, supplementing the Treason Act and conferring emergency powers upon the Government. By employing all the persuasion at his command he was able to get the bill through the Dail last week.

During the intervals of debate on the Public Safety Bill, many a Deputy amused himself by flaying vociferously His Brittanic Majesty's Governor General of the Irish Free State, Timothy Michael Healy, jovial Anglo-Irish barrister, author of that illuminating volume Why Ireland is not Free. Indiscreet, the Governor General is reported to have recently declared: "The longer the Sinn Feiners boycott the Dail the better pleased I shall be!"

*Mary I ("Bloody Mary," 1516-1558) and her husband King Philip II of Spain bore jointly perhaps the most diversified title ever attached to English sovereigns: "Philip and Mary, by the Grace of God, King and Queen of England and France, Naples, Jerusalem and Ireland, Princes of Spain and Sicily, Archdukes of Austria, Dukes of Milan, Burgundy and Brabant."