MORE BLOOD ON ERIN’S SHIELD

IRELAND’S PATH TO FREEDOM is again marred by

assassination. This time it is the Free State Government’s

“strongman, ” Kevin O’Higgins, Vice-President and Minis-

ter of Justice and Foreign Affairs, whose life is taken. Shot several

times by three armed men equipped with revolvers and a fast

automobile on July 10, while on his way to church, he died within

a few hours with words of forgiveness for his enemies on his lips.

What the political effect upon the country will bo is yet to be

determined, but, declares President Cosgrave: “The assassin’s

bullet will not succeed in terrorizing the

Free State; there are men who will gladly

step into his place.” In the opinion of

The Irish. Times, of Dublin, the crime will

rally the entire nation to the Government’s

support, and inspire all parties with a new

sense of responsibility. “Whatever the

motive for the shooting, ” cables the Dublin

correspondent of the New York Herald

Tribune, “it is clear that it did not repre-

sent an attack on the Free State,” but

according to President Cosgrave, this

crime “is the fruit of a steady, persistent

attack against the Government.” How-

ever, he adds: “It will fail in its object.

We will meet this form of terrorism as wo

have met other forms of terrorism.” And

in the New York Times we read:

“That the brutal killing of Mr. O’Hig-

gins sprang from partizan hatreds, there

can be little doubt. The assassins did not

bear themselves like men cherishing a

private grudge. It is taken for granted by

all Irishmen, and is explicitly asserted by

the Government of the Irish Free State,

that the atrocious murder was intended

as an act of intimidation. Extreme Re-

publicans in Ireland hasten to disavow it,

and to protest that while they have been

and remain at deadly enmity with the Gov-

ernment, they have not countenanced or

desired violence. But it is always easy

for the wild fringe of an Irish party to

Translate the whirling words of their leaders

into bloody deeds.

“It will be said that political crimes

are not unknown in other countries. Free

America has seen three Presidents of the

United States shot to death. But there is a difference between

individual acts of men who had very nearly if not quite lost their

reason and the planned assassination of a man like Vice-President

O’Higgins by a band of desperate conspirators who somehow be-

lieved that they and their friends would get a party advantage

out of it.”

International Newsreel photograph

“I DIE AS I HAVE LIVED”—

“For Ireland,” said Vice-President Kevin

O'Higgins, of the Irish Tree State, who

was shot down by assassins on July 10.

*'I die at peace with my enemies and with

my God. 1 forgive them all.”

“The murder of the Irish Vice-President may be an isolated

instance, or it may be the first in a series of reprisals. It may

mark a crucial period in Ireland’s progress, ” observes the Spring-

field Union. “But the Free State will carry on,” believes the

Syracuse Post-Standard. “The Irish Free State already has

survived several assassinations,” we are reminded by the Jersey

City Journal, and the New .York Telegraph agrees that,“if anything,

this attack on Mr. O’Higgins will have a tendency to strengthen

the sentiment in favor of the Cosgrave Government.”

Vice-President O’Higgins was only thirty-five. His grand-

father was one of the prominent supporters and one of the his-

torians of the Home Rule movement, according to the New York

Evening World. His uncle is now Governor-General of the Free

State. His father was assassinated four years ago. Only last

May, say Dublin dispatches, when a bomb was hurled at

Vice-President O’Higgins, General Daly caught the missile

in his hand and pinched out the fuse. Says the Brooklyn Eagle:

“Not so broad a man as Michael Collins, who also was assas-

sinated, Kevin O’Higgins was a stronger character. His work as

Minister of Justice was charged with having sacrificed seventy-

seven political opponents on the altar of Order. That it broke

the back of the De Valera armed resistance is conceded. And

fairness is compelled to concede that those who were executed

were, in the name of civil war, looting banks, breaking into private

houses, killing unarmed citizens. Was there any other way of

stopping the business? O’Higgins thought not. He said in a

campaign speech at Monaghan this year: ‘We’ll execute seventy-

seven more if necessary.’”

“Vice-President O’Higgins,” notes the Philadelphia Public

Ledger, “was a stern, hard man in dealing

with disorder, but he saved the Free State

in the Four Courts rising in 1922.” “He

was the most important figure in the Ad-

ministration, ” declares the neighboring

Record. The Inquirer is convinced that

“whoever succeeds him will take his life in

his hands.” As Dr. Denis A. McCarthy

writes in the Boston Herald:

‘' In an atmosphere of intense political

bitterness such as was engendered by the

recent elections, there may always and in

every country be found irresponsible men

who, seeking the nearest way to a desired

end, are moved without much hesitation

to a deed of violence and bloodshed.

“It was men of this type, I have no

doubt, who planned and carried out the

dreadful crime of last Sunday in Dublin.

Irishmen in name, these murderers were no

more representative of the real Ireland

than the men who murdered Lincoln were

representative of the real America. Were

they anything but tyros in human affairs,

they would have known that no cause, be

it ever so righteous, is advanced one

particle by assassination.

“Good may come of this crime, terrible

as it is, if the horror of it serves to shock

all parties in Ireland, and sympathizers in

America of such parties, into a realization

of the folly and -wickedness of unbridled

attacks upon one another. It is by listen-

ing to and reading such attacks that im-

pulsive and desperate men are moved to

deeds from [which those who speak wildly

or write wildly would themselves shrink in

horror. ”

“The Irish Free State is warned by the

assassination of Vice-President O’Higgins that her duty is to

destroy the nest of frenzied conspirators whose bloody deeds

are aimed at her new State sovereignty and are injuring her

national repute,” notes the Syracuse Herald, while in the New

York IForld we read:

“Republican leaders in Ireland make haste to disavow any

sympathy for the brutal murder of Kevin O’Higgins, and there can

be no doubt of their sincerity. Assassination as a party weapon

always recoils upon the users. O’Higgins—one of the first bril-

liant graduates of the National University, a Sinn Fein patriot,

a firm adherent to the treaty—was probably the victim of animosi-

ties aroused when, as Home Minister, he was Mr. Cosgrave’s right

arm in suppressing sedition. Those who shot him down were

thinking of the hatreds of the past, not the policies of the future.

“To liquidate these hatreds would be less difficult if the over-

whelming majority of Irishmen accepted the treaty with Great

Britain. The majority exists—but it is not quite overwhelming.

Tlu’ee times within three years the voters have declared by

roughly 2 to 1 for the treaty and the Constitution. To-day we

have the spectacle of Mr. Cosgrave carrying on at the head of a

party with 46 votes in the Dail, while De Valera heads the Fianna

Fail with 44 outside, refusing to participate in Parliament. In other

words, a party representing not far from one-third the voters is in

a position of complete irresponsibility and complete opposition.

"The Dublin murder is another evidence that Ireland still

has to achieve a real political and moral unity.”