The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1921-07-18
THREE THOUSAND FRESHMEN AND
 WOMEN IN JAIL

Dublin, July Is - More than 5000 1rlshmen and women are in intern
 ment camps, and almost as many more in jail under sentence or await ing trial, or held for other reasons. The estimate of military authorities as to the numbers who ought to be interned runs, if rumor is to be cred tied, into tens of thousands.
 The chief military operation in Ireland is a roundup. Dublin has furnished several examples. Large areas of the city have been from time to time regregated. Nobody is search has been made of the houses, and till all the men in the district have been cross-examined. Some times these searches of a district in Dublin hve lasted a couple of days Every day on a smaller scale some thing of the same kind is in pro- gress.
 Apart from detailed search of city districts there is every day a constant search on chance of persons in the streets. Anybody at any hour may be called upon to submit to search. and have examined the papers he is carrying. The thing has become so usual that no ordinary citizen minds it. It is all in the days life. In spite of all this activity, attacks on the Crown forces continue. Not a day passes without the sound of the bomb and the revolver somewhere in Dublin, and the Republicans seem to possess more war material than be- fore the searches.
 Simultaneously with the round ups in Dublin, there have been, par ticularly in the martial law areas, similar round-ups in the country. Cordons are drawn round the portion of a countryside to be searched, and the houses and the persons in them put through strict examination Such raids have often taken place on Sun days, presumably to cause as little interference as possible with ordinary business.
 Churches both in Dublin and the country are watched as the congre- gations leave, and searches made of suspected persons Protestant church congregations have not es- capped.
 Within the last few weeks or two the country raids have been more extensive and more prolonged. and cavalry regiments have taken part in them Hundreds of persons have been swept into the net, but in the great majority of cases the arrests are only for a short time Men who can give a satisfactory account of themselves and are clearly not mem bers of the Republican army are let go at once. If there is any doubt the order is throw him in the lorry." The cases are then sifted in detail and large numbers released The rest go to internment camps or are held for possible trial.
 Internment cases rarely exceed about 70 a week, and there are from time to time releases from intern ment- Sometimes captured men are put into identification parades Men who have carried out an ambush are looked for by the victims of the am bushes.
 A large increase of the troops in July has been predicted. The Sim Fein has been preparing for it. The distribution of the troops requires housing accommodation. The Sim Fein's intelligence department calcu- lates where they are likely to be stationed, and the houses they are supposed to intend to occupy are set on fire. This chiefly accounts for the destruction recently of mansions all over Ireland. Some of them no doubt are destroyed in reprisal for the burning of Sim Fein houses by military order. But the motive in many cases is to hamper future mili- tary activities.
 It is officially declared by the Sim Fein to be their policy to destroy for use as black houses or tempor- ary barracks It is a danger to a house to have the military making inquiries about the accommodation it can afford.
 The constant trenching of roads, now so frequent that the average motorist always carries blanks in his car to help him over Instructions, is stated by Sim Fein to be to frus- trate British attempts to re-establish their cOmnIIni nica tionS.