Up & Down O'Duffy
Grown overconfident after his defy to the British Government last month, Free State President Eamon de Valera lost a trick last week to his Fascist foe blue-shirted General Owen O'Duffy. Last fortnight de Valera men stopped the blue-shirted General on his way to address a County Mayo meeting of the blue-shirted party he had just renamed the "League of Youth" after the President banned it as the Young Ireland Association."
The police chased O'Duffy across a plowed field, lost him to a crowd finally nabbed him but not before he had shouted martyr-wise to his followers: "I am still wearing a blue shirt and our cause will go on. Be calm, and we shall win although I am in prison." Then he was hustled off to jail, on a charge of wearing a blue shirt.
Martyrs prosper in Irish air. Suddenly the cries were "Up O'Duffy!" "Down with the Broy Harriers!", the latter a play on the name of Dublin Police Chief Broy and a famed Irish pack of fast but craven rabbit hounds. De Valera men countered with tales of the soft life O'Duffy would lead in the Arbour Hill Prison outside Dublin. The Arbour Hill Prison under Minister of Defence Frank Aiken has won the name of "Aiken's Grand Hotel." The General resided in the "Grand barely 48 hours. His lawyers apparently agreed with the State in thinking that to wear a blue shirt was an arrestable offense, but when the case came up before nonpolitical, irremovable Justice O'Byrne of the Free State's High Court he brushed aside the de Valera ban on blue shirts, peremptorily ordered General O'Duffy's release.
"The Blue Shirt Movement," crowed the General, quick to seize his advantage is perfectly legal and Constitutional We will carry on until, as I hope and believe Irish people entrust us with the Government of this country." He announced that he would sue the Government for false arrest.
This was too much for President de
Valera. He dug up a newspaper report that O'Dufty had said in a speech in County Donegal that "Mr. De Valera and his party murdered Kevin O'Higgins and Michael Collins and de Valera is now entitled to the fate he gave Collins and O'Higgins". Since those two Irish patriots were assassinated, Mr. de Valera called General O'Duffy up for trial before a military tribunal on charges of "incitement to murder the President." ( Indignantly General O'Duffy replied: " I emphatically deny that I, by word or implication or in any other way stated or suggested that 'Mr. de Valera is entitled to the fate he gave Mick Collins and Kevin O'Higgins.' Needless to say 1 would not stand for any such suggestion."
As every Irishman knows, the deeper issue lay last week between President de Valera's defiance of Britain and General
Duffy's program of cooperation.