"The Hour Has Come!"

Early one morning last week a sleepy-eyed fish porter trudged through the grimy streets of Manchester. Suddenly a terrific explosion in the mains beneath the street hurled his body into the air. He was killed and his falling body seriously injured a passing postman. Almost at the same moment, Bam! another blast ripped open a street half a mile away. Bam! a third blew up the pavement a few hundred yards further on. Terror-stricken early risers, certain they were being bombed from the air, grabbed gas masks issued during the CzechoSlovak Crisis and rushed into the streets.

At the same hour, nearly a dozen other explosions blasted England, most of them at power stations, gas works, water reservoirs and public buildings. Police who rushed to the spots had no trouble figuring out the cause. A number of unexploded home-made bombs were found. They had been made from batteries, alarm clocks and gelignite, a gelatin dynamite or "safe" explosive favored by British safecrackers.

For some time, British police had feared that increasing thefts of gelignite from military storehouses forecast an epidemic of bank robberies. Last week, however, they had enough evidence to convince them that the missing gelignite was not in the hands of yeggs but was being used by zealous Irish terrorists to write another bloody chapter in 700 years of strife between Britain and Ireland.

Day before the bombings the citizens of Eire were startled to find their principal streets plastered with a proclamation issued by the illegal, fanatically nationalist Irish Republican Army. The proclamation also appeared in Northern Ireland, the six counties still under British rule. In England, while police officials chased around after the bombers, copies of the proclamation were posted in London, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham. It called for militant action against Britain to force the long-sought union of all Ireland under one Republic, proclaimed:

''There is no need to declare a Republic of Ireland. . . . There is no need to reaffirm the declaration of Irish independence. The hour has come for a supreme effort to make both effective, so in the name of the unconquered dead and the faithful living we pledge ourselves to the task. . . . We call upon the people of Ireland ... to assist us in the efforts we are about to make in God's name."

Flying squads of British police immediately began a round-up of all known Irish extremists living in England. Homes of Irishmen in London and Manchester, the main centres of bombing activity, were searched. Some 20 Irishmen, all suspected of membership in the I. R. A., were arrested. One of them had in his possession a copy of the proclamation, another 40 sticks of gelignite. Six barrels of explosives were seized in a raid at Manchester.

It was reported that Scotland Yard officials traced a wad of English banknotes found on one of the prisoners to a German bank. This tended to confirm the suspicions of many Britons that the Nazis were not above backing the terrorist activities of the I. R. A., as German guns and ammunition backed the Irish revolutionaries in the Easter Rebellion of 1916.

Despite the police crackdown, the bombings continued throughout the week and several more attempts, all unsuccessful, were made to damage Britain's vital public services. On the west coast of Eire, an abortive attempt was made to damage a hotel in Tralee where bespectacled, 25-year-old Francis Chamberlain, only son of the Prime Minister, was on holiday. Most Britons had forgotten that the Chamberlains had a son; British picture agencies, deluged with requests for his photograph had none. Young Chamberlain has been employed for a year as a $25-a-week apprentice at the Witton plant of Imperial Chemical Industries, Ltd., where he is learning the armament business from the bottom up.

Fearful thai attempts would be made on the lives of British Cabinet officials, their offices and homes were heavily guarded. An extra-strong guard was given youthful Malcolm MacDonald, Colonial and Dominions Secretary, who was instrumental in bringing the leaders of Eire and the British Government together for their compromise treaty of last April.

Ever since 1922, when Britain granted the 26 southern counties Free State status and set up the six northern counties as a separate Government, every English-hating Irishman has been determined that some day the industrial north and the agricultural south must become one nation. A handful of intransigent nationalists, organized into the Irish Republican Army, have long held that force is the only argument Britain will heed.

In 1936, I.R.A. terrorist attacks on British soldiers in Eire and on those Irishmen who sought compromise with Britain became so embarrassing that Premier Eamon de Valera, an I.R.A. fighter before he became reconciled to the policy of compromise, ordered it disarmed, dissolved. But I.R.A. extremists were not to be stopped. Up in the hills of rock-walled County Donegal, in the purple bogs of County Mayo and windswept County Clare they began to drill and equip a new army, reported to be 15,000 strong. If the bombings continue, they are certain to disrupt the policy of friendly understanding which Premier de Valera has achieved with Britain. But "Dev" would like to see a united Ireland, and he knows Britain has her hands full elsewhere. Last week he took no occasion to sound off one way or another on the bombings. He is the last to forget the old Sinn Fein slogan: "England's crisis is Ireland's opportunity."

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