MANY ARRESTS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 January 1940, Page 4

MANY ARRESTS

ROUND-UP OF TERRORISTS IN EIRE GREATEST IN COUNTRY'S HISTORY. CAR-LOAD OF I.R.A. OFFICERS ESCAPES. By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright. DUBLIN, January 5. As Dr. Douglas Hyde. President of Eire, signed the antiTerrorist Bills, detectives and civil guards swept the country in the greatest round-up in Eire’s history. Two hundred arrests are expected. Republican leaders, who are wellknown to the police, fled to secret hide-outs in the hills and bogs, where they are sufficiently armed and supplied to fight to the death any attackers.

The authorities realised the real strength of the I.R.A. only in the past two weeks. They fully expect that major operations by large groups of armed guards will be necessary before the organisation 's suppressed. Detachments of troops, armed with rifles and bayonets, surrounded the Cork courts when, the trial of those arrested began. All were remanded in custody, including one local councillor. With rifles blazing right and left, a carload of men, believed to be I.R.A. officers, broke through the military cordon holding Finglas Road to Dublin. No soldiers were hit, but it is believed that at least one passenger in the car was hit. The car was travelling at high speed. Cordons have been stationed on all roads to Dublin since the Phoenix Park raid.

Rounding off the debate in the Dail, on the Emergency Powers Bill, the Premier, Mr de Valera, was able to draw from his own experience. He said that careless routine work was responsible for the recent raid on the magazine fort at Phoenix Park. It was the same lack of observance of simple routine which had made it possible for him to escape from Lincoln Prison. Mr de Valera got out of Lincoln Prison in 1919 by making a key with files smuggled into him in a cake.

The Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence also spoke. “When small nations are falling like ninepins all over the world,” he said, “this small nation must have discipline if it is to survive.”