Collected Chips

After 16 years of rule, solemn old Eamon de Valera was out. In the Dail, longtime Dev-baiting Deputy James Dillon declaimed: "Thanks be to God!"

Up to the very moment when the Dail met to elect a Taoiseach (literally: leader) , Dev had been hopeful. Of the splinter parties which had ended his Fianna Fall majority, he cracked scornfully: "Many a chisel has lost chips, but did you ever see anybody collecting the chips and trying to make another chisel out of them?"

Yet this time the magnet of politics held the anti-Dev chips together. The victors elected unassuming 56-year-old John Aloysius Costello, K.C., Fine Gael frontbencher, as Eire's new Premier. To the comfort of tradition, Mr. Costello (accent on first syllable) was a devout Roman Catholic and family man (five children).

He had, however, one other distinction novel in a Taoiseach: he was a keen weekend golfer (averaging 85-90) at the Dublin Club, Eire's St. Andrews.

Irishmen here & there gave their opinions. Said Man-of-Letters Oliver St. John Gogarty, in Manhattan: "There's not much humor in the man Costello, but then there was not much humor in De Valera either." James Dillon might make up for that. Dillon, who used to say that Dev's agricultural policy was "no eggs, no poultry, no bacon, and damned little of anything else," became Costello's Minister for Agriculture. Arch-Nationalist Sean MacBride, whose Clann na Poblachta joined the coalition, became Minister for External Affairs.

One other Irishman was heard from. Said G. B. Shaw: "I shall be glad to know what subject the coalition is likely to agree upon except the one of getting into power. . . ."

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