The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1919-10-18

= Tall, somewhat stopped, certainly
spare, the President of the Irish Re-
public, Eamon De Valera, arrests and
holds attention not because he wills
| it, but because the purpose which ac-
tuates him has all but absorbed the
individual, and thus made him a man
apart.
He is the president of a republic
which has no standing in the councils
of the world, says the Brooklyn Stand
ard Union.
His mission to America is to get
official recognition for the Sim Fein
Or Republican government in Ireland
set up in Easter Week by a handful
OF Irish patriots of which he was one
Of the leaders, and of which he alone
escaped execution at the hands of the
British government.
There are ways and means which
he discusses for the accomplishment
| of his mission, phases which he elu-
| cidates of the real issues involved in
| freedom for Ireland-the political, the
economic, the social and the so-called
religious phase. But, when all this
has been said, single cry seems to
have come from the quiet depths of
his being: Stretch out your hand to
| the Irish republic!"
This appeal he addresses particu-
larly to what he terms the plain peo-
ple' of America, and it reaches fifteen
to twenty thousands of men and
women and children, gathered in mass
meetings which break into applause
and cheers which last many minutes
by the clock, and through which De
Valera stands with a curious smile,
| deferential and patient-the smile of
a man both idealist and fighter, both
planner and doer, the smile of man
who glimpses victory somewhere
forward will be the most treacherous
and wearisome.
Genius For Taking Pains.
Get at the men about him and ask
How did this former university in.
structor in mathematics become the
head and front of the Irish cause?'
and the answers always include the
commentary, THE president is a
plugger." Turning back to his face
smooth-shaven and lean and too much
lined for the thirty-seven years he
has lived, the characterization is con
firmed by every feature and express
sion. s
1t is this genius for taking pains
which has made him rise from the
ranks of the Irish volunteers to lead
ership upon which hangs the fate of
a free Ireland.
Before he was placed in command
of the Ringsend district of the Dublin
linsurrection of Easter Week, De Va.
lera had taken pains to work out in
his mind schemes of organization, ow.
ing to which little silent, swift-mov.
| ing groups had sprung up here and
there all over Ireland, drilling, drill
ing, secretly and mostly at night, un
til scarcely a district in all Ireland
had not its nucleus for fighting force
l-and it's nucleus for a free nation
1t was not De Valera's way to set
himself up as dictator with a cab
met Of lesser dictators.
TT is time," he says, 'that the plain
lpeople realize their strength" and
while he cries out against the help
lessness of the plain people, he plans
and works necessarily to so organize
them that never again need it be Ia
mented-at least in free Ireland-that
they are but the pawns of those in
authority.
The democratic character of the
Sim Fein movement is concededly due
most of all to De Valera, and the past
lyear has demonstrated that his belief
in the people was fully justified, for