THE DEATH OF DE VALERA

...Jack Lynch, for-mer prime minister and present leader of the Fianna Fail party founded by Mr...

...When World War II broke out he kept the Irish Republic neutral de-spite constant pressures from Britain, the United States and Germany...

...A year earlier he had rejoiced in welcoming to Ireland President Kennedy as the fulfill-ment of the Irish dream in the United States...

...In this failure De Valera was powerless against trends set in motion since even before the days of Daniel O'Connell, but his concept of the language was a Component of nationalism characteristic of a distinctively nineteenth century mentality...

...However slow-moving the politicians on both sides of the border continue to be, it may be that the only way for peace to be established through-out the island will come through a rejection of both loyalist hegemony and De Valerian nationalism, with a return to Wolfe Tone's idea of nationalist brotherhood uniting Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter...

...Tributes which poured into Dublin from all parts of the world gave testimony to his status as a figure of the caliber of a De Gaulle or a Churchill...

...In that period in Ireland he always re-mained a figure of controversy-a political leader who never won the support of more than 50 percent of the Irish people...

...This was summed up most succinctly by the present President of the Republic, Mr...

...Such divided assessment no doubt will provide histo-rians with tortuous terrain for decades to come, but all will concur with the judgment of Mr...

...The controversy stemmed from his re-jection of the Treaty...

...He lacked a social philosophy...

...Even although De Valera in his maturity recognized that the North could not be united to the South by force, his leadership in the South through such moves as creating the socio-religiously conservative 1937 constitution and through neutrality in World War II deepened the di-vision between the two parts of Ireland...

...In turn, he became a formidable commandant in the 1916 Easter Rising and a reprieved hero, the leader of resurgent Sinn Fein and the President of the 1918-21 Republic...

...To his credit must also be listed his work to ensure the independence of the Irish judiciary and the integrity of the institutions of the Irish State...

...Ironi-cally, a few weeks prior to his death a leaked report in the Irish Times revealed that an Irish Government-sponsored survey had shown that the number of fluent speakers in the Irish language had declined and was now less than 6 percent of the population...

...Although born in New York, De Valera was brought up and educated in Ireland where he became imbued with a fanatical desire to work for Ireland's national independence from Britain...

...Ironically too his death came at a time when North-ern Ireland struggled to avoid open civil war between Catholic and Protestant, between the Provisional IRA and the militant Protestant organizations...

...In 1964-some 45 years after his failure to gain American recognition from Woodrow Wilson of Irish independence from Britain-De Valera experienced the personal triumph of receiving the key of the freedom of the city of Washington and of hearing the speaker welcome him in Congress as the head of a "sovereign, independent State...

...The strength of the Loyalist opposition to absorption into the Re-public has remained strong over that 50-year period, showing that De Valera's anti-British stand was too simplistic, overlooking the fact that a proportion of Irishmen wanted nothing to do with a republic...

...As a revolu-tionary gunman turned politician, De Valera was to be head of Government for a total of 21 years and to be President, the honorary head of the Irish Republic, for 14 years...

...Abroad, he became the personification of Ireland...

...De Valera, that "Dev" ranks among the greatest of all Irishmen...

...Unfortunately, his own vision of Ireland was that of a rural Irish-speaking nation...

...Since the outbreak of the present violence in 1969 politicians in the Republic have continued to pay lip-service to the long-term objective of national unity, but have failed notably to make constitutional changes (apart from the gesture of removing the article relating to the special position of the Catholic Church) to change the Republic from its confessional character to a pluralist state...

...This maneuver enabled Fianna Fail and De Valera to ensure the con-solidation of parliamentary democracy in the newly es-tablished State while continuing to peacefully work towards the establishment of a Republic...

...END OF AN ERA THE DEATH OF DE VMLERM The death of Eamon de Valera, the outstanding Irish nationalist leader of the twentieth century and modern Ireland's most internationally renowned statesman, came " peacefully in Dublin at the end of August in his 93rd year...

...the revolutionary was a Tory...

...Today many commentators regard his neutrality as his most skillful diplomatic achievement...

...No less sincerely but much less favorably an old political opponent of De Valera and a former Prime Minister, Mr...

...His re-emergence came with the establishment of his political party, Fianna Fail (Soldiers of Destiny) and that party's subsequent hair-splitting acceptance of the oath of allegiance to the British crown as a condition for entry into the Irish Parliament...

...O'Dalaigh, who said in a radio broadcast: "Throughout the world, and, in particular, among people striving to be free, his name has been a synonym for the struggle for Irish independence...

...There is no escaping the fact also that despite his achievement in establishing the Republic of Ireland as an independent democratic State, he failed to achieve his two basic objectives of restoring the Irish language and of uniting the North and South of the country...

...The trans-formation of the Irish economy and the steps towards industrialization were to come with his successor, Mr...

...That commitment, at the cost of much personal and domestic hardship, shaped his own career away from the peaceful routine of a teacher of mathematics to the turbulent vicissitudes of life as soldier, prisoner and politician...

...Opponents felt that De Valera should have gone to London for the negotiations with the Lloyd George Government rather than staying in Dublin and subsequently opposing the terms...

...From such early eminence his career went into agon-izing eclipse as he led the defeated republican opposition in the Civil War against the Treaty with the Lloyd George Government which set up the South as a Free State but a State associated with the British Empire...

...Later, he was to alienate former colleagues who re-mained attached to the use of force through the IRA by invoking state power to imprison and, where neces-sary, execute...

...In a real sense, the De Valera age ended in 1969 when he swapped the prime ministership for the titular post of president...

...As president of the Council of the League of Nations, he gave Ireland a voice in international affairs, gaining respect for his denunciations of Japanese aggression against Manchuria and of Italy's invasion of Abyssinia...

...But even in death this most controversial of Irish-men showed the powerful influence he held over the minds and hearts of the Irish people by rekindling in them the deep emotions of adulation and hatred that have surrounded him in his lifetime...

...Yet, such was his undoubted stature as the father of the Irish Republic that even bitter critics united with fervent followers in according him homage at a state funeral in Dublin...

...He was applauded by nations as the man who freed Ireland from Britain after 700 years of oppression, and started the decline of the British Empire...

...JOHN COONEY...

...John A. Costello, broadcast that in his opinion De Valera's in-fluence on Ireland had come to an end and that he had left nothing of permanent value...

...English and American commercial imperialism had proved too potent for the survival of the Irish language as the norm of conversation...

...However, the limita-tions of that greatness will become more apparent as Ireland moves further and further away from the agricul-tural Catholic and Gaelic country dreamed of by De Valera...

...Sean Lemass...

...Ireland's entry into the European Eco-nomic Community in 1972 further pushed Ireland away from the austerity of the De Valera period...

...He did so, however, with much heart-searching, but he had become convinced of the sov-ereignty of parliament...

...They blamed him for the Civil War, although he maintained that the negotiators had not, as they should have, con-sulted him in Dublin prior to signing any agreement...