Spring Vacation

By all the saints, couldn't a man read his paper in peace at 10 o'clock in the morning? He might as well give up and go to his work for all the pleasure there was to be had in a soft, spring Dublin morning, what with youngsters careering about the streets laughing and singing and shouting their foolish heads off.

For Dublin's 75,000 school kids last week, a springtime dream had come true. Their teachers, bless their hearts, had gone on strike. Mad through & through at official procrastination, they had walked out of their classrooms for the first time in Irish history, with no sign of going back.

Bubbling with holiday spirits, the children dropped into their schools to ring the bells in gay derision or to gather around pianos and bang out American swing. In Dublin's green parks, sedate old pensioners and mooning poets basking in the warm spring sunshine suddenly found themselves uprooted to make way for football games. Back alleys echoed to the shouts of handball and toss-ha'penny players. The merrily rioting kids stopped politely to give their names and addresses when windows got broken. When one crowd tipped over a pushcart in Dublin's market district, another group of 50 rushed in to set it on its wheels again. Never in the beautiful world had things been righter.

By noon each day most of the kids were sitting with their legs dangling over the lapping River Liffey or ranged in ranks on the steps of staid Georgian houses in the professional district, peaceably munching sandwich lunches.

With over 10,000 of all Eire's teachers donating a tenth of their pay to the cause, Dublin's 1,200-odd primary-school teachers were content to wait it out all summer if necessary. Vaguely promised a raise in salary (present maximum for men: $1,900) since December 1944, they were determined to get it. Present salaries, said the teachers' union, were not "in accordance with the dignity of the profession." Cried Dublin's dignified teachers, we just can't live on the money.

In Dublin's private Catholic schools, church teachers carried on. One game little nun took on more than 100 extra pupils, then broke down in tears. But before week's end Dublin's Archbishop McQuaid gave the strikers his official sympathy.

Not so sympathetic were some of Eire's Protestants. Roared fiery Canon John Tobias of prosperous Rathmines: "Strike action is to be deplored. I can hardly conceive of any greater disservice to the nation."

The teachers' union considered carefully before answering. Then they said: "The hell with the Canon!"

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