Rejoinder from Eire
Mr. De Valera's reply to Mr. Churchill's passing observations on the attitude of Eire during the war might have been deliberately polemic. Instead it was deliberately mild. Appreciation is due to Mr. De Valera for that, for polemics between Britain and Eire at this juncture would serve no useful purpose. The Irish President stirred up feeling considerably by his call on the German Minister to condole on the death of Hitler—a stereotyped convention which even General Franco thought it well to dispense' with—and he cannot complain if some of the comments on his country are bitter. His speech made one debating point, the admission by Mr. Churchill that in certain eventualities it would have been impossible to allow Eire's neutrality to imperil Britain's existence, but it conceded that the British Prime Minister had in that respect exercised a restraint which few other national leaders would. For the rest, Mr. De Valera, like most of his countrymen, is still dwelling in the seven- teenth century. His parallel between Britain standing alone against Germany in 1940 and Ireland standing alone for generations against British oppression is grotesque, but not more grotesque than the further parallel between a possible forcible German occupation of the six south-eastern counties of England and the occupation of the six north-eastern counties of Ireland by a population pass'onately resolved to remain part of the British Commonwealth and not vir- tually separated from it like Eire. However, Mr. De Valera, no doubt, had to speak. Now he has spoken. •
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