The Irish Deadlock The journey of the British Ministers to
Ireland and Mr. de Valera's flying visit to London leave the Irish situation completely unchanged. The Irish Cabinet has not moved an inch from the attitude it has maintained" from the first. The Oath is to be abolished ; about the annuities there may perhaps be negotiation, but none is in progress yet. The Oath Bill, however, is held up in the Senate, and unless Mr. de Valera chooses to put the matter to the test by a dissolution it will be eighteen months before the Bill can become law. A great deal may happen before then. The resolve to isolate the Free State by such measures as the Control of Manufacturers Bill now before the Dail (designed to keep all foreign enterprises, including British out of the country) will have borne its inevitable fruit. The fever of nationalism pervading the world has fallen in an aggravated form on Ireland and apparently she will have to be half-ruined by fanatical attempts at an impossible self-sufficiency before disillusion dawns and the hard road back to economic sanity begins to be trodden. Mr. de Valera is going to Ottawa and he may learn a great deal there—though it is doubtful what impression fact or argument make on a personality whose actions are determined by fixed ideas far more than by ordinary processes of reasoning.
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