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MONITOR
The Family Calling Weekly of New Jersey
Seventeenth Year—No. 33
Saturday, August 25, 1923
Two Dollars Per Annum—Price Five Cents
Militarism vs. The People's Vote
By B. F.
A MONGST all their blundering acts, no deed committed by satellites of the Freak State was as foolish as the arrest and imprisonment, on the Feast of the Assumption, of President DeValera. As a martyr he will be a great gainer at the polls and Republicans will rally to the just cause with renewed fervor. The Freak State will gain nothing but opprobrium.
It is said that the Freak State cabinet was equally divided on the wisdom elected choice of the people of Ireland. No wonder the English-created cabinet was divided: rebels though they were, they saw the foolishness of further arousing to subdue a people into subjection and abjection by the stupid course of incarcerating the leader.
Addressing a vast throng fearlessly and openly in the market square at Ennis, a throng which had given him, as the anti-Irish press had to admit, a "tumultuous reception," the President had but begun his remarks when the enemy swooped upon him in gun-laden cars, shooting among the crowd, seriously and perhaps fatally wounding bystanders, charging the people with bayonets and then, in transitory triumph, carrying off to jail the unresisting President. The whole thing, like most of the English Freak State performances, strongly suggestive of opera bouffé; it was dramatic, it was noisy and ostentatious, but it was rotten bad taste.
The President, calmly addressing the people before his seizure, said:
"When we could not come to you to tell you the truth, they said we were anarchists, out for destruction. I come here to tell you I never stood for destruction. I never have stood for the enemy's game, which is incite one party to fight another party.
"Since the beginning, I have preached one gospel, which is the gospel I preach to you today."
The arrival of the military out off further remarks.
In a burst of loyalty the people tried to defend him, but the President waved them back and submitted to the indignity of arrest. A coward would have relished help; would have permitted bloodshed. Not so a right-ecus cause, and his star has not descended.
To England and her today Freak State be-
Freedom's battle once begun,
Bequeathed from bleeding sire to son,
Though baffled oft is ever won.
At a big Republican gathering in O'Connell Street, Dublin, last Sunday, the chief speakers were the twelve-year-old sons of Eamon DeValera and Erskine Childers.
Young DeValera said:
"Friends of Ireland, my father promised to speak to you today, but he cannot for servants of the foreigner arrested him in Clare, and imprisoned him. I know not what they will do with him. They may give him the same fate as Dick McKee, Erskine Childers and Liam Mellows. They can put us and others to death. But they can not kill the spirit of freedom in Ireland. That spirit will live and Ireland will be free from sea to sea in spite of foreigners."
Erskine Childers's son declared:
"Republican comrades, in the name of my beloved father, I stand of here President and great leader DeValera. Does the Free State Government believe they were promoting peace when they arrested him? Though we deprived of his inspiring guidance we will remember the example of his noble sacrifice. I ask you to pray night and day for his safety and that Ireland may never again be stained by the blood of her faithful sons."
Mrs. Clarke, widow of Tom Clarke, presided, and among those on the platform was Mrs. Pearse.
NOTED WRITER'S DESCRIPTION.
WITHIN the hour, almost, that the deed was accomplished, the papers of America flashed to their readers in full page headlines and prominent pictures, the news: "Irish Chieftain seized by Free Staters."
They told, some of them, without any shading down of the truth that when as part of the election campaign now on in Ireland, Eamon DeValera as Republican candidate in County Clare, appeared to speak before a meeting in Ennis he got a tumultuous reception from the great mass of men and women awaiting him around the platform and to them he began to speak, first in Irish, then in English, but hardly hd he begun than (even as the British in Amritsar) the British Free Staters in armored lorry and on foot dashed on the peaceful mass of listeners firing as they came. The noted writer, Hugh Martin, who was present, thus reported the scene in the N. Y. American of August 16:
"The streeting of the crowd from Republica. Before gruggling to the platform, DeValera was nearly pulled to pieces by his enthusiastic welcomers and when he got there he sank exhausted on a chair. When he rose to speak, it was twenty minutes after 2 o'clock. There was no reason to expect that it would be anything but a successful meeting without excitement. His first few words were in Irish, and then he opened in English, and in a ringing voice began:
"They said we are anarchists, out for destruction. I have come here to tell you that I never stood for destruction."
"I have never stood for brother's hand being raised against brother, for that is playing the enemy's game. I have preached one gospel—the gospel of—"
At this moment there was a sudden disturbance at the right-hand edge of the crowd.
The heads of a double file of green-uniformed troops emerged from the narrow street leading into the square. Men shouted:
"They're coming for him!"
Women shrieked:
"The soldiers are coming!"
The main body of the crowd broke and ran, leaving a space in front of the platform for the troops. Then the crowd surged back and fierce altercations broke out. DeValera continued speaking, but his words were inaudible. In the din men on the platform yelled challenges at the soldiers.
In a moment changed to terror as
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