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FRANKFURTS PERTH, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 1942.
. . Why
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fire Cannot Surrender the Ports
De Valera Will Not Stab Britain in the Back 150,000 IRISHMEN FIGHT FOR ENGLAND iv M. Grattan O'Leary
Some Stories that Aren't True
It took the good offices of Brendan racken, Tipperary man who is Winton Churchill's Minister of Informa:..on, to get me on a blacked -out plane Next day crom Manchester to Dublin, found myself examining a bronze tatue of Abraham Lincoln and a copy f the American Declaration of Inde.inidence in the anteroom of the offices Eamon De Valera, Taoiseach (Chief) : the neutral state of Eire, An attendant in an olive-green uniorm came through a door and said, I 'The Taoiseach is awaiting you:' tepped inside to meet a man who vas far different from my conception if the traditional Irish rebel against he hated Sassenach. Eamon De Valera is a tall man with great frame and powerful physique, ind his hair, which I had thought lack, is brown, thinning and streaked lightly with grey. His face, deeply ned, is strong but kindly the nose rominent, the mouth sensitive. His ands, large and powerful, yet with ing tapering fingers, tell something of he artist and the poet, As he greeted le quietly with his soft Dublin brogue, was hard to think of him as the stwhile revolutionary who once pit al dynamite against British guns, eard his own death sentence and lantiished in dungeons for his country's eedom. De Valera was due in two hours to :ake an important speech at the
()Connell Street monument tu Parnell; his notes, unfinished, lay before him, "You need not hurry," he said. "As the head of a neutral state I can't talk to you for publication; not about Eire and the war. But I shall he
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glad to talk to you confidentially, to answer your questions off the record," Ile was completely friendly.
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against England pass his lips. He denied vehemently-and with proof to back up his vehemence-tales of tolerated anti-British activities by the German minister. can't quote De Valera. What I cLit say, on the basis of what he told -ne, is that while this man is not antiBritish, and certainly not anti-American. and most certainly not pro-German, he will not give up Ireland's ports and bases, That the United States is in the war will make no difference. What has been consistently refused I
EAMON DE VALERAWill not give up the bases, will fight an invader, will not fight Britain, will not coerce Ulster,
Mr, De Valera Explains, I put to De Valera scores of questions, questions suggested to me before leaving ('anada and the United States, questions suggested to me in England To all of them he answered quietly, candidly and, I feel certain, with sin. ceritv. He talked of the British and United States request for Irish ports and bases, of the possibility of Ireland being invaded, of the state of the Irish army, of the country's defences of his view of the war and its aftermath, of relations between the South and North. Not once did a word of hostility
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WINSTON CHURCHILL. Irishmen think of him as the colleague of Cromwell and Castlereagh.
London will be as stoutly refused Washington. Why? Because De Valera feels that the sacrifices involved would be out of all proportion to the value of the contribution. Eire hasn't a modern antiaircraft gun in the entire country, She has no tanks, no anti-tank guns, no mechanised divisions, no heavy artil-
lery, no aim- force, When, last summer, a German bomber dropped a single stick of bombs on North Dublin more than seventy houses were demolished and thirty persons killed. In such circumstances, De Valera argues, Eire's entry into the war, involved in surrender of the bases, would mean wholesale massacre of unprotected civilians in cities like Dublin Limerick, ('ork. On top of that there would come, almost of a certainty, a split in the Eire Cabinet and Dail, plus trouble with the I.R.A. (Irish Republican Army) and all the disunity and chaos and confusion which Hitler seeks to create among people he is fighting. Whether in the event of such things the ports (which are mostly anchorages) and air bases (which would have to be built) could be used within a year, is douLtful. Whether De Valera may agree at some later stage to hand over his ports and air bases, I could not learn. What I did learn is that it will he a mistake for Americans to assume that he will do so, or be more inclined to do so, now that the United States is in the war. The visits to Dublin of Mr. Wendell Wilkie and of Col, William ("Wild Bill") Donovan were not helpful. The reception given De Valera's Defence Minister Aiken in the United States was even less helpful. Also, unless I misread Dublin opinion, Irish leaders in Eire to -day are not much moved by those Irish -Americans who keep shouting advice across the Atlantic, and who seem to imagine that the mark of love for Ireland is hatred of the English. The men I met in Dublin have not much in common with "Come Back to Erin" sentimentalists and ink -pot revolutionaries in New York and Boston. These Irishmen know in their hearts that a Hitler victory would be a loss for Ireland. They know that even if Hitler were to leave Ireland alone and content himself with destruction of the power and wealth of England, there would be desolation for Ireland just the same. They remember that ninety per cent of all their exports go to England: that a vast part of their savings is invested in British securities: that a collapse of England's banks (Continued on Page 4,)
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