GRIM REALITY

Marlborough Express, Volume LXXVI, Issue 242, 14 October 1942, Page 3

GRIM REALITY

PRICE OF EIREAN NEUTRALITY.

P.A. Cable.

LONDON, Oct. 11.

Mr De Valera's warning that neutrality would he no picnic is now heing realised in Eire, says the Dublin correspondent of the Daily Express. There is no coal for domestic hearths. • Gas is cut off for part of the day in Dublin and none will he availahle for lighting throughout the winter. Thus one-third of, Duhlin's 40,000 homes must use kerosene and candles. It is expected that communal feeding and cooking centres will have to he opened. The main foods have reached impossible prices. Bacon 'has disappeared from homes and rice is 2s a lh. The tea smuggled over the Northern Ir eland horder fetches £1 a pound. Following a numher of attacks on police this week, a curfew was ordered for the larger area of west Belfast. No one except those holding permits is allowed ahroad in the areas affected hetv/een 8.30 p.m. and 6 a.m. A curfew was last imposed in Belfast in 1935, following disturbances in two other areas. Two policemen and three girls were injured by splinters when a feomb exploded on Saturday night outside the Donegal Pass police barracks at Belfast, which is outside the curfew area. Many shots were fired after the explosion, and plate-glass in shop windows opposite the police barracks was riddled with bullets. Earlier a bomb was thrown at a .police patrol in the curfew area, but no one was injured. The bomb thrower escaped.