News of the Week
MR. COSGRAVE'S unexpected victory in the Dail on Tuesday was of much greater importance than is suggested by his narrow margin of one vote. That vote was the casting vote of the Speaker, but the fact that Mr. Cosgrave's Government was not defeated proclaims the failure of Mr. De Valera's scheme. There is no doubt that Mr. De Valera was playing for a very high stake, and if he had succeeded the future of the Free State would have exchanged its hopeful aspect for one of profound gloom. It was not merely that Mr. De Valera feared political extinction from the new law which provides that every candidate at an election must pledge himself to take the Oath of Allegiance if he is returned ; he tried to turn defence into offence, and and calculated that if his party ended their-abstention and took their seats in the Dail they would be able, by meansof a general working alliance with the Labour PaTty and Captain Redmond's National League, to sway the Dail, and be able to exact as the price of their political friendship a modification Of the Oath. * * * .*
