Up & Down O'Duffy

Up & Down O'Duffy

Grown overconfident after his defy to the British Government last month, Free State President Eamon de Valera lost a trick last week to his Fascist foe blue-shirted General Owen O'Duffy. Last fortnight de Valera men stopped the blue-shirted General on his way to address a County Mayo meeting of the blue-shirted party he had just renamed the "League of Youth" after the President banned it as the Young Ireland Association."

The police chased O'Duffy across a plowed field, lost him to a crowd finally nabbed him but not before he had shouted martyr-wise to his followers: "I am still wearing a blue shirt and our cause will go on. Be calm, and we shall win although I am in prison." Then he was hustled off to jail, on a charge of wearing a blue shirt.

Martyrs prosper in Irish air. Suddenly the cries were "Up O'Duffy!" "Down with the Broy Harriers!", the latter a play on the name of Dublin Police Chief Broy and a famed Irish pack of fast but craven rabbit hounds. De Valera men countered with tales of the soft life O'Duffy would lead in the Arbour Hill Prison outside Dublin. The Arbour Hill Prison under Minister of Defence Frank Aiken has won the name of "Aiken's Grand Hotel." The General resided in the "Grand barely 48 hours. His lawyers apparently agreed with the State in thinking that to wear a blue shirt was an arrestable offense, but when the case came up before nonpolitical, irremovable Justice O'Byrne of the Free State's High Court he brushed aside the de Valera ban on blue shirts, peremptorily ordered General O'Duffy's release.

"The Blue Shirt Movement," crowed the General, quick to seize his advantage is perfectly legal and Constitutional We will carry on until, as I hope and believe Irish people entrust us with the Government of this country." He announced that he would sue the Government for false arrest.

This was too much for President de

Valera. He dug up a newspaper report that O'Dufty had said in a speech in County Donegal that "Mr. De Valera and his party murdered Kevin O'Higgins and Michael Collins and de Valera is now entitled to the fate he gave Collins and O'Higgins". Since those two Irish patriots were assassinated, Mr. de Valera called General O'Duffy up for trial before a military tribunal on charges of "incitement to murder the President." ( Indignantly General O'Duffy replied: " I emphatically deny that I, by word or implication or in any other way stated or suggested that 'Mr. de Valera is entitled to the fate he gave Mick Collins and Kevin O'Higgins.' Needless to say 1 would not stand for any such suggestion."

As every Irishman knows, the deeper issue lay last week between President de Valera's defiance of Britain and General

Duffy's program of cooperation.

Smarting under Justice O'Byrne's blow to his prestige, President de Valera was hit again last week by the Bishop of his home constituency, the Right Reverend Michael Fogarty of Killaloe. In a speech to undergraduates of a Catholic college the Bishop blamed the President for inviting trade reprisals, cried: "You are the sons of farmers whose unhappy lot it has become to see their industry and sole source of livelihood practically killed by a heartlessness which is inconceivable." As if to nail home the Bishop's point Britain last week made the Free State farmers' lot unhappier still by announcing that British imports of Irish "fat cattle" will be cut in half for the next three months, imports of Irish "store cattle" (unfattened) will be cut 121/2%. Irish live stock men rushed together in Dublin to bewail this body blow to their industry to ask harried de Valera to do something

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