Dorothy Thompson

Wilmington Morning News/September 13, 1920

LONDON, Sept 13.—What constitutes being suppressed In Ireland?

I must admit that I left the country without finding out.

The Industrial Commission for the Investigation of Irish Industries and Resources, appointed by the Minister of Trade and Commerce of the Irish Republic, was suppressed. Everyone told me so. Everyone told me, also, that if I would go to a certain office in a well-known office building on a main street in Dublin I would find someone who would tell me more about the commission.

Of course I went. I found a spacious office. The walls were hung with maps of Ireland; charts showing coal deposits, graphs describing the course of the milk industry; pictures of harbors and fisheries. At a large desk overflowing with letters and reports sat an urbane gentleman deep in conversation with two callers, evidently bent on serious business.

They left in a few minutes, and he greeted me courteously.

“I want to find out something about the work of the former Industrial Commission,” I said.

“This is the office of the Industrial Commission of the Irish Republic, if that is what you want,” he replied, his eyes twinkling.

“But I thought the commission was suppressed!” I exclaimed.

He roared with laughter at my naivete. “Of course it is—of course!” he said.

“But you are carrying on?”

“Of course we are-of course,” he said.

Commission is “Suppressed”

Then he gave me his definition of “being suppressed.” “We aren’t in the directory, and we don’t have a telephone.”

“That must be very inconvenient,” I commiserated.

“Not at all” was the cheerful reply. “We use our neighbor’s telephone, and everyone knows where we are.”

And then for an hour he described to me the work of the commission. “When the Republic was set up,” he explained, “we all realized that we had to do more than merely defend ourselves. We had to do constructive work. Sinn Fein had elected a government, and this government straightway appointed a ministry. The Minister of Trade, who is a very clever young economist, a Protestant by the way, called together business men, manufacturers, farmers, professors, the most able men he could find and appointed them an Industrial Commission. He did not even ask them whether they were Republicans. He didn’t subject them to any rules. He told them to find out what was the matter with Irish industry; study the dairy business, the fisheries, the unused resources, and report to the Republic, with recommendations.

“Now, of course, since, from the English point of view, the Republic is illegal, we are illegal, and when we went down into the west of Ireland to hold open sittings on the question of the milk supply we were refused public buildings; soldiers attended our hearings, and finally we were declared an illegal assembly. So we took our name out of the telephone book.

“Let me present you with a seditious document,” he said. “It is the first report—on the condition of the dairy industry in Ireland.”

It was an inoffensive looking document, bound tolerantly enough in an orange cover, and devoted to a technical discussion of cow-teats, butter analyses, the organization of creameries, etc. Only the introduction branded it. It was addressed to Arthur Griffith, Acting President of the Irish Republic, and began: “In accordance with your instructions”—

And then this Irishman plunged into an enthusiastic discussion of Irish resources. “They have said there is no coal in Ireland. There are at least a hundred million tons in one area alone. Ireland has six billion tons of peat, with a coal equivalent of three billion tons. Ireland has a longer coast than England, and opportunities for developing the finest fisheries in the world. Enterprise today depends on the creation of joint stock companies, and these depend on the national circulation of capital and then on a free market and quotation for their stock. None of these is yet possible in Ireland. There is no money market in Ireland; the circulation of capital is centered in London—but wait”—

Going out, I encountered the neighbor with the convenient telephone. “Who is that gentleman?” I asked, nodding toward the door.

“That,” he answered, “is one of the assistant secretaries. A special expert on coal.”

The next morning I read, in a conservatives London paper, that there was “reason to believe” that the Republican Government was “contemplating” activity In Ireland.

That Irish Wit

One thing that is not suppressed in Ireland is the unquenchable spirit of laughter among the people. Even in these dark times, an Irishman never quite takes himself of the situation seriously. Another member of this same commission—the secretary, indeed, Mr. Darrell Figgis—very narrowly escaped hanging when he went with this commission to the West of Ireland to hold an open hearing on some industrial question. He was arrested by an officer, court martialed on the spot and sentenced to be hanged. The officer even went so far as to send out for “twenty feet of rope,” and the Irishman saved himself only by a verbal filibuster worthy of Robert M. LaFollette. Had this Protestant Irishman, who had been disinherited of a fortune because of his Sinn Fein sympathies, been hanged the country would have been ablaze with indignation. As is, his satirical description of the officer “awash with liquor,” his inimitable mimicry of the court-martial, his picture of himself, eyeing the rope and spinning out a long discourse upon the absolute necessity of testing all cows, while a companion looked frantically for a less drunk officer with whom to reason—the whole story is the laughter of Ireland.

Nor does Ireland seem particularly concerned with the fate of the officer. He was given a less important post as a consequence of his act; but whether the rebuke was because of attempted murder, or whether it was because he failed, neither Figgis nor Ireland appears to know.