New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1921-07-21
British Officials
Virtual Prisoners
In Dublin Castle
Government Aides Working
In Place Are Kept Within
Barbed Wire Enclosure;
Never Go Out Into Street

LONDON, July 5 (By Mail).-Some
government officials working in Dublin
Castle are practically prisoners, writes
Sir William Beach Thomas from Dub
lin to The London Daily Mail
In certain notorious court or quad
in Dublin you may see, if you can
penetrate there-and penetration is
thorny performances number of
planks newly nailed against doorway.
playing with pail against these
planSs is only allowed between the
hours of and p. NJ
In the same court is a newly erected
tennis net, with balls of wire encircling
the mud surface.
These aids to exercise and bodily
health have been raised for the sake
OF the prisoners, prisoners" in this
sense meaning certain officials. They
are numerous, for the place they in
habit is the Castle"-strange resi-
dence Of the strangest succession of
officials in our history.
number of these officials are to-
day as truly prisoners as if they were
in Mountjoy Gaol. They live within
barbed wire ENHANCEMENT. AS you
enter, past many police, many soldiers,
you see great coils Of wire even over
your head. On his charming Irish
idiom one of the guardians said to me:
IF they lived out, it would be no more
life; but we are fair strangled with
regulations, that is true"
II entered the castle slowly and
tortuosuly by narrow ways" says Sir
William. 81 came out in an Official car,
and felt exactly as if we were making
sally against hostile troops. The
great doors opened suddenly and closed
quickly, and the car shot out with
rapid impetus.
"As we turned out of the curious
. little byway to the castle into the
buster street a lorry went across US
brsting with rifles and glinting with
pistols. One, at any rate, of the rifles
was held not merely at the ready but
closely pressed against the shoulder
with eye looking along the barrel and
the finger on the trigger.
Such sight is, of course, usual in
Ireland. No one pays much attention.
so, too, the Imprisonment Of the bored
and pallid officials in the castle is a
commonplace, accepted as almost nor
NAL.
But just as no one can even guess
at what Ireland is like till he goes
there, so nobody in ireland can feel
quite fantastic and upsidedown the
country is till he comes away. You do
not reallze the unreallty of a night
mare till you wake up and inhabit a
natural world.
Dublin Castle is perhaps the most
fantastic spot in Ireland; but fanta-
sizes walk the street of every village,
Turk behind the glinting mica of the
granite stones of the Wicklow hills.
pop out suddenly along the hacked and
haunted roads, and are wrapped in the
broken wires of telegraph and tele-
phone that litter the countryside.
Intellectual patriots rub shoulders
with young brigands, and it needs a
specialist to distinguish a William Tell
from lick Tarpn. The strangest mes
sages are carried in the egg-baskets
| Of market women, and Englshwome
bring back notes written on a quarter
inch of paper and hidden in their hats,
Every one is furtive. You cannot
write letter with any confidence that
it will not be opend and censored by
unknown persons, whatever your poll
teal couor. PASSED by the (Repub-
lican) Censor" is quite common SUI
prescription on the letters you receive.
All this nightmare tangle grows
more tangled, not less, and the longer
the process continues the more it will
need some fantastic agency from a
Grlmn's fairy story to unravel it.