Double Warning

From Minister for Supplies Sean F. Lemass fortnight ago Eire got some very straight and very bad news. Coming at a time when official Dublin buzzed with the report that Sean Russell, the old jailbird head of the long suppressed, British-hating Irish Republican Army, was in Berlin, his words carried an ominous significance. Said he: "Rights alone are poor protection for small states when great empires go to war. Within a few weeks or a few months a crisis will come, and with it the greatest danger to our nation."

Last week long-faced Prime Minister Eamon de Valera underlined his subordinate's words with the grave admission that one crisis was already at hand: "The belligerents in blockading each other are blockading us. We have not a moment to lose in preparing for the worst in regard to all those supplies that come to us from abroad." Then he announced that gasoline would be unobtainable by private motorists during the month of February, that tea rations would be cut onefourth, that wheat reserves would last barely until the next harvest, that private coal consumption would be reduced to half a ton per home per month, that cattle would have to be slaughtered unless fodder formerly imported could be grown at home.

Two days later he made plain the full measure of the Government's concern. Approved was a defense decree empowering the Prime Minister to set up courts-martial for civilians, "should the necessity arise."

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