PARTITION REMAINS IN NEW CONSTITUTION
For Unilateral Action Cannot
End It
From Our Dublin Correspondent It was generally expected that Mr. de do with that resolution." The resolution Valera would reveal many of the secrets of his proposed constitution at the National Convention of the Fianna Fail party last week. These expectations were disappointed, and as was briefly outlined in last week's Catholic Herald, the President confined himself mainly to a restatement of his previous utterances on the subject.
One new point of importance, however, has emerged from his speech at the Convention—he has decided to accept the Minority Report of the Senate Commission and to establish a second chamber on vocational or functional lines. Speaking about functional organisation, he said he welcomed national organisation on such lines, but he wished it to be voluntary and not imposed from above.
It is likely, following this official sanction, that a new impetus will be given to the many organisations representing various phases of agriculture, industry, education and labour that have begun in recent years, and that greater co-ordination of these bodies may be expected.
The President still believes, however, that the first Chamber, the elected voice of the people, must nor be curbed by any other authority, and the new Senate will apparently have only one way of preventing rushed legislation. It will be able to invoke the referendum to the people, at least when the proposed law involves changing a constitutional point.
No Effect on Partition " Will the new constitution end Partition? " one of the delegates asked.
"I said that what we were going to do was everything we could do and make effective by unilateral action," replied Mr. de Valera. " Unilateral action is not going to end partition and it is not going to get the British out of our ports. These are things we cannot do at present, at any rate. We will do everything in our power to solve these things as time goes on. . I will not be forced to take up a position one inch in front of the position I think we can hold." But it will be so worded that no change will have to be made when the Six Counties come in—" It will be made so that it can continue to be an Irish nation's Constitution when that cruel wrong of Partition is undone."
Industrial Expansion
A resolution calling for the repeal of the Public Safety Act was vigorously opposed by the President. " Do you want this country to get into the condition of other countries? " he asked. " Does anybody think that people are imprisoned because they are republicans? I ask you as people of responsibility, do not have anything to was withdrawn.
Discussing the work of his party, the President said that when the party was founded ten years ago, practically all the manufacturing industries in the country had been destroyed.
In the interval fifty industries had been established, with seven hundred factories and workshops and an increase of 30,000 persons in industrial employment. Agricultural economy had been re-orientated to supply food for the people of Ireland.
Nearly all the sugar requirements are being produced to the benefit of 30,000 beet growers; and 20,000 acres of wheat has increased to 255,000 annually,
A Move that Failed
Considerable comment has been excited by a meeting held in Dublin last week to "expose the role of the Irish Independent which was organising, under cover of a ramp against the Spanish Government, the anti-republican forces in Ireland." The Dublin daily was vehemently denounced, and at the conclusion the following message was sent to the Basque Nationalists: " Republicans assembled in Dublin working to make known the truth of your struggle repudiate Irish Christian Front and new Fascist bodies, who have misrepresented Irish sentiment."
Independent Hits Back Commenting editorially on the meeting, the Independent says: "All the subsequent events have proved how correct was the Irish Independent when it declared in the first week of the civil war that this is a fight to the death between Communism . . and all who stand for the ancient faith and traditions of Spain.'
" The Irish Independent has taken its stand with the Pope and with the Irish hierarchy. Because it has done so a little clique in Dublin last night organised a meeting to charge us with • partisan political motives ' . . . The cause of an Irish republic is the cause of an Ireland not merely free but Catholic; and those who died for an Irish republic would have died even more gladly for their Faith."
In various quarters the comment has been made that the Dublin meeting is Communism's latest method of " peaceful penetration." At an earlier stage in the Spanish dispute, the Communistic elements in this country sided openly with the Spanish Government. Public opinion, brought together by the Bishops' statements and by such organisations as the Irish Christian Front, forced them to abandon that position. It is not likely their success will be any greater in their new role.