IRELAND: Rebels & Razzberries

It seemed like old times in Dublin last week. A military tribunal sat in Collins Barracks (before the War, Royal Barracks) trying men for their lives.

Little better than the rest of the world has Ireland escaped Depression. Irish industries are depressed. Irish dairy products and livestock are a glut. More important, a lot of doors have been closed to Irish immigration. More depressed Irishmen from the U. S. are going back to Ireland than are trying to leave. With nothing to do, no place to go, Irishmen often make trouble, especially when cooped up at home with a lot of other Irishmen.

The "Irish Republican Army," a diehard minority that has never accepted the Free State Government of bushy-haired President William Thomas Cosgrave, has gained hundreds of recruits. Little groups of solemn-eyed young men have been drilling seriously in clearings in the woods. First serious trouble came four months ago when Republicans and Orangemen rioted at Portadown, County Armagh (TIME, Aug. 24). That trouble spread. Just as in the bloody days of 1916, men were found dead in the ditches. On Armistice Day, Dublin was in a turmoil. Crowds surged up & down O'Connell Street, cheering, singing "Down King! Up Republican Army!" Free State officials were alive to the seriousness of the situation. A Public Safety Act was issued making membership in the Irish Republican Army and eleven other secret organizations illegal.* A military tribunal was set up to try prisoners for sedition. Free State police raided a dozen homes, jailed 20 men in the ancient Arbour Hill Military Prison, where leaders of the Rebellion of 1916 were executed and buried.

Last week the Military Tribunal met. Its members: Col. Francis Dennett, Acting Assistant Chief of Staff of the Free State Army; Col. Daniel McKenna, Deputy Quartermaster General; Commandant Connor Whelan; Commandant Frederick Tuite; Deputy Adjutant General John Joyce. Considering the fact that the Tribunal had power of life & death, that there is no appeal from their decisions (though the Government may modify or rescind sentences), the first verdicts were remarkably light.

Papers made much of the fact that the first prisoner sentenced was a U.S. citizen, John Mulgrew. He went to the U. S. in 1923, became naturalized, returned to Ireland in 1930. Last week he was charged with being a member of the executive council of Communistic Saor Eire, a position to which he had confessed. U. S. Citizen Mulgrew swore that the confession was "twisted out of me by the third degree." Nevertheless he was sentenced to six months at hard labor to be followed by deportation.

Two most unlucky prisoners were Daniel McKiernan and Peter Mitchell, farm boys from Drumdiffer. County Leitrim. Daniel McKiernan had been a member of the Republican Army. Brooding on the risks he was running undermined his courage. He asked his friend Peter Mitchell to help him dispose of the rifles he had been ordered to hide. Just as the two boys were dumping their contraband in a bog the Drumdiffer constabulary closed in on them. The Military Tribunal again was not unduly severe. The boys were released in $250 personal bail on a pledge never to have anything more to do with illegal organizations.