MR. DE VALERA’s release from prison was followed by a public reception in Dublin, at which he was acclaimed as President of the Irish Republic. It is to be presumed that Mr. Cosgrave would not have agreed to his release if the Free State Government had not felt itself strong enough to resist, if not to suppress, a renewed Republican agitation. It must, however, be confessed that it is difficult for Englishmen to believe in the stability of the present Irish administration. Mr. Cosgrave and his colleagues are doubtless well-meaning, and their difficulties have been and are very many, but they obviously lack the backing of public opinion absolutely necessary to a new national government. It is appalling to think of Ireland once more given over to the unpractical sentimentalism of Mr. De Valera, but it is by no means an impossible development. It is inevitable that all experiments in government should pass through many perils before they become stable. This is now happening in India, where difficulties are made greater by the vital differences of East and West. Lord Olivier has been hotly denounced for his defence in the House of Lords of Mr. Das, the Indian Nationalist leader. But mere denunciation leads nowhere, and the attempt at sympathetic understanding must help to the peaceful establishment of the new order.

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