"No Question of Force"

"No Question of Force"

Just when His Majesty's Government were deciding to partition Palestine (see col. 3) much as Ireland was partitioned in 1921, the people of the Free State were adopting last week a new Constitution drawn up for the express purpose of putting Ireland together again (TIME, May 10).

On hand for the most orderly election in exuberant Free State history was foot-weary Alfred Emanuel Smith, whose first European ramble has left behind such anomalies as that swank Rome dance bands are still being asked by Italian socialites to play The Sidewalks of New York. On the sidewalks of Dublin last week Mr. Smith remarked to reporters how calm the polling seemed, came away from a big de Valera political rally to exclaim: "It was almost as unanimous as a Tammany meeting!"

The vote was not nearly so unanimous as tall, teacherish President Eamon de Valera had hoped and expected, but at latest reports ratification of the new Constitution seemed certain by 560,000 votes to 436,000. The de Valera party made a weaker showing, with virtually complete returns early this week promising its opponents roughly half of the Dail's 138 seats.

The new Constitution entirely omits mention of any King. It provides for the election of a President having somewhat the ornamental powers of the President of France, with most of the executive job being done, as in France, by a Premier. In Dublin last week Mr. de Valera was said to want his trusty henchman Sean T. O'Kelly elected President, himself to become Premier.

To make this change will take time and require another election in about six months. Moreover, lacking a clear majority, Mr. de Valera will have to make concessions to the Labor Party to secure its support. Nothing seemed likely to be done for the present about the most ominous feature of the new Constitution: it purports to be the Constitution not of the Irish Free State alone but of all Ireland, including the six counties of Ulster or Northern Ireland which are now part of the United Kingdom. To hotheads who want "Dev" at once to take drastic action, Mr. de Valera last week replied:

"One-third of the population of the six counties already are anxious to join with us and if you can get another one-sixth of the whole population of the six counties to support the idea of unity of Ireland, then you will have a majority for the unity of Ireland. When we have got that majority the problem of the unity of the country will be solved. . . . There has been no question of force in regard to the six counties. We recognize it would be a distasteful task and one which probably would not succeed and which ultimately, if it did, would not make for the kind of union we want."

So unpalatable to Britons was the Irish situation of last week that London papers joined in a conspiracy of silence much like that with which they concealed Mrs. Simpson as long as possible. "For all one reads in the British press about tomorrow's election," cabled London Correspondent Frederick T. Birchall to the New York Times, "it might just as well be taking place in Bulgaria or Bolivia."

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