The news went abroad: Ireland is starving.
The west of Ireland suffered for lack of potatoes (its staple food) for the lack of peat (its staple fuel). The Free State Government rushed aid to the stricken area, fed daily 18,000 persons, distributed much free coal.
The significance of the famine, which William T. Cosgrove, President of the Free State Cabinet, called "much exaggerated," and which Eamon De Valera, Anglophobe Republican leader, declared was an "English press scare," is to be found in the fact that hungry men stir the most dangerous political discontent.
President...
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