E has been an almost un-

for Treland for hundreds of years,
pe Since Wolfe Tone’s Prin-
Pes Of the Society of United
Pe “men in 1792 the demand for
Mplete national independence
4s been predominant.
ae the beginning of this
tio ty there grew up the na-
Onal Separatist movement called
side rin (Ourselves Alone”)
velane. Side with the rapidly de-
“Ping Labor movement.
Bil long-promised Home Rule
i, mthed its way through par-
lon ft, was rejected by the
reudi but got as far as its final
Maar In the Commons in
ation 1914, when the debate was
urned under pressure from
le Belfast reactionaries.
of Th bill applied to the whole
ta eland. The Tory landlords
{Sapitalists violently objected
Ae prospect of being subject
# Dublin parliament, the more
‘ in view of the growing unity,
+. coe by Connolly, between
lope ast and Socialist Repub-

Gace Northern “loyalists” under
cisi on refused to accept the de-
ty of parliament, and once
of <y Announced their intention
: Sisting Home Rule in arms.
mung eurchased arms and am-
gleg ton in Germany and smug-

them in; pri
24, 1914. into Larne on April

king. Nationalists replied in
from G ey, too, purchased arms
at Ho frmany and landed them
Ring hag On July 26, 1914. Only
broke YS later the European war
i) ..0Ut and the Home Rule
vlan Suspended “for the dura-

meee ™ain activity of the Re-
reeruitie® Was now opposition to
tween ne campaigns, Unity be-
Under he Sinn Fein volunteers
Zen arse and the Irish Citi-
tong? Under Connolly grew
mand stronger.
of Neto 1916 Connolly was told
ection nalist plans for an insur-
Ativeyy and agreed to support it
itich, The Proclamation of
hy gi) Republic was printed
OW yet Army men on. their
The in Liberty Hall.

ven, fp Ster Rebellion was, how-
Cong ion ated and limited by
ets Mong the Nationalist
© Duby, —2& joint rebel forces
In, with Connolly as com-

My

Rig Litt ty
iy Wiha, t

broken agitation for Freedom ”

Recruiting in London for Irish Republican Army has been stepped up.

Ireland will never
accept partition |

mander-in-chief, held out for
nearly a week, but were forced
to surrender.

All those who had signed the
Proclamation were executed dur-
ing the next fortnight (Connolly
strapped in a chair too badly
wounded to stand), and many
other Republicans soon after.

But the Irish Republic had
been proclaimed at last.

*

In 1918 there came a General
Election.

Sinn Fein literally swept Ire-
land. Its MPs refused to go to
Westminster! and assembled in
Dublin as Dail Eireann (the As-
sembly of Ireland), declaring
themselves, in the name of the
Republic proclaimed in 1916, to
be the legislative body chosen by
the Irish people.

There followed the Anglo-Irish

War (known also as the Tan War,
after the police “specials” whose
two-colored uniforms earned them
the hated name of Black-and-
Tans). This was a war Of ex-

UE OUEN EEE

By S. JACKSON

termination against all Irish na-
tionalists, and thousands were
killed and thousands more im-
prisoned.

While this bloody struggle was
at its height, Lloyd George went
ahead with his plan for the parti-
tion of Ireland. The Government
of Ireland Act — the Partition
Act — was passed at Westminster
in December 1920 by British votes
alone.

(Lloyd George had first propos-
ed partition by an Amending Bill
in 1914, when in Asquith’s cabi-
net. His suggestion then was
that it would be only for six
years, and that a,referendum
should be held to decide what
areas were to be excluded.

Connolly immediately issued a
manifeste denouncing this dis-
memberment of Ireland as “the
most dastardly outrage ever
planned against the Irish nation,”
and calling on the Irish workers
to defend the unity of Ireland
with their lives if necessary.)

Now, with Ireland in a state of

war, Lloyd George carried out
his plan — not for six years but
as a permanent partition. The
parliament of “Northern Ire-
land” was set up and opened in
June 1921.

Then he arranged a truce. Sinn
Fein delegates went to London
to negotiate. By a combination
of threats and deception on Lloyd
George’s part, and of open
treachery on the part of one of
the Irish delegates, Lloyd George
got five signatures to a “Treaty.”

Two signatories withdrew their
names before it came up for rati-
fication, explaining that they had
signed only under the threat of
“immediate and terrible full-scale
war.”

This “Treaty” proposed Do-
minion Home Rule for the whole
of Ireland. But it also enabled
the Northern Ireland Parliament
controlling the Six Counties to
vote itself out of the “Irish Free
State.”

It is noteworthy that the of-
ficial documents at least do not

‘Write

Ay,
Mae,

MO Tat tt

800 words on the Soviet circus’

[EURO

by ARCHIE JOHNSTONE

Job in hand, 1 am remi

a : , T am reminded

the ne Titatively, is to cover

Viet Gntial Aspects of the So-
0 wor ri in approximately

this Once’ 224 would I just for

“Ome to “ cut the cackle and

‘Ne ’Osses?

IS gp itt agree that the issue

With pqble as that. To begin

Thang 2 20t agree that the job

ld Bos 8dvanced when a 200
eh \ good

ond ees Saying, the first re-

Mig ple of circus-critic-

a ds
"sponge voted back at your cor-

Shelish a by an extremely non-
Furth lee of Discipline.
Bo, to sa Although I can say
ieee in open compe-
Professional goose-
Cannot say Nay to a
When J get on the
horses, wild horses
Me off it within a
Senyse ther peas:
oyutial Still: one of the Es-
i Kens of the Soviet Cir-
1 aardash and one of the
te pects of Karandash is
Bly te cackle,
Sino Pice of with due respect to
si mite Epo isiPline, and with
Oy and cae to Mikhail Ani-
ae STEPPE HORSES 12
ftern Whom I spent a bliss-
_ “On behind the scenes

is
peenti

at Moscow circus yesterday), I
shall, just for this once, cut the
‘osses and come to the cackle.

In point of stature — five feet
two inches to be exact — Karan-
dash could be described as one
of the lesser phenomena of So-
viet life; but he is connected, al-
most as a symbol, with the ma-
jor phenomena — the great am-
ount of argument about laughter
and humor that goes on in these
Soviet Socialist Republics where,
the usual usually-well-informed
quarters assure Us, argument and
laughter and humor, are for-
bidden.

For instance, it is recorded
that one argument which began

in a railway compartment at |

Moscow’s Yaroslav Station with
the simple question, “ How does
Karandash do it?’ went on with-
out interruption until the arguers
heard a porter calling:
“Vladivostok! All out!”,
True, somewhere around Omsk-
or Tomsk or Irkutsk the argu-
ment side-tracked into the causa-
tion, significance, psychology,
social value and what-have-you
of laughter itself. But in the un-
avoidable absence of Professor
Emeritus James Drever, presi-
dent of the Twelfth World Con-
gress of Psychology, no one ven-
tured to answer the fundamental

question, What IS laughter! I

hasten to fill the breach. In the

good professor's own Dictionary
of Psychology the word is de-
fined once and for all:

LAUGHTER: An emotional re-
sponse, expressive normally of
joy, in the child and the unso-
phisticated adult.

Meaning without actually nam-
ing names, you and me and all
the other non-Twelfth ‘World Psy-
chologists who laugh at Karan-
dash or Charlie Chaplin or any-
one else who bursts the bal-

loons of bluster, bumptiousness, :

H-bombast and all the other
bloody B’s, as our rude fore-
fathers used to say.

How Karandash “does it,’ how
he evokes this “emotional re-
sponse in the child and the unso-
phisticated adult” is simple, just
as simple as describing a spiral
staircase with both hands behind
your back.

He is something more than the
Universal Little Man or Bad Boy
who “taketh the mighty down
from their seats” by whipping
chairs from under them: he drags
us into it as accomplices-before-
the-fact. At times there is an
unspoken How-am-I-doing? ap-
peal for our approval, but more
often the idea he puts over is:

Don’t encourage me, I’m bad
enough as it is... .Ah well, if
you insist, here goes! And you

identify yourself with him so
much that when he has an acci-

UTS ET tt te a) 0) nT aT |

use the dishones term “Ulster.”
Ths province of Ulster consists
of nine counties, three of which
are outside “Northern freland.”

Had the imperialists claimed
all Ulster in 1921, it would not
have been possible to establish
and maintain Partition.

The “Treaty” threw Ireland at
once into civil war, and the two
years 1922-23 saw scenes of hor-
ror and bitterness even outdoing
what had gone before.

*

At last De Valera (the last sur-
viving 1916 commandant) omer-
ed the Republican forces to cease ©
fire in 1923. A small “hard-core”
group, however, did not lay down.
their arms, but continued in be-—
ing (illegally to both the British
and the Free State authorities)

‘under the name Irish Republican

Army, to which they claimed the
sole right.

The fight against Partition con-
tinued. No Irish party or gov-
ernment has ever .accepted it.

In 1949 the partition of Ireland
Was ratified in perpetuity by the
Labor government, while the
Dublin (Costello) government re-
pealed the Articles of External
Association and declared the 26
counties to be the Republic of
Ireland.

The last few years have seen
the re-emergence of Sinn Fein
as a nation-wide political move-
ment with a social policy and
program, and recent months have
seen the election of Sinn Fein
MPs in the Six Counties and at-
tempts to unseat them at the die-
tates of the Carsonites.

The “Irish Question” is very
far from. settled. _Of course,
“pure” nationalism can be politi-.
cally dangerous; but it is so only
if the progressive movement
ignores or despises it.

Our business, as Connolly so
brilliantly exemplified, is to un-
derstand such movements by -
studying their history, to sym-
pathize with their resistance to.
imperialist oppression (without
necessarily always approving
theier methtods), and to offer
them the benefit of our own
special knowledge and _ inter-
pretation, while treating their
national peculiarities “with par-
ticular caution and attention.”

FATA RRR eR RTT RLM

dent with an egg in his hat you
catch yourself mopping your own
brow.

* * *

But, before the approximately
800 words are up, let me men-
tion, if only by name, some other
Essential Aspects of the Soviet
Circus.

The phrase “the circus comes
to town” is well known here,
mainly because that is the title
of a favorite play at Radio Mos-
cow, based on a little gem of a
a story by Albert Maltz. But, in
fact, the circus doesn’t come
to town here; it has a permanent
home in Moscow and in every
large Soviet City, and it plays to
packed houses not just for a short
season but for eleven months of
the year. : ay

Even windjammer sailors ad-
mire the ingenious “rigging” of
the Big Top, but these special-
ly-built circuses have el&borate
equipment — much of it worked
from the roof — that makes Pos-
sible large-scale spectacles, quick
transformations and lighting and
other effects that are beyond the
scope of the Big Top. For in-
stance, a clown, or a clown’s vic-
tim, caught up in the complicated
wire-and-pulley . system can be
made to fly through the air with
much greater ease than the grace-
ful young man on the flying tra-
peze.

mt i

ee ttt

vENEDEE
a

In the present show at the Mos-
cow circus, 16 Soviet republics
(plus China and Korea) are re-
presented. That is typical. For
some reason different nationali-
ties have different circus special-
ties, and always have had. Natu-
rally you expect bear-tamers
from the Far North, tiger-tamers
from the Far East, equestrains

from the Cossack lands and so
on.

But why (as a Leningrad voice
at my elbow asks) have all the
best clowns and jugglers always.

. come from Leningrad, and stran-

Ser still, why should the Caucas-
ian mountain republic of Daghes-
tan, with less than a million
Population, produce Possibly
more than half of the USSR’S
tightrope-walkers?

Back home, I remember, a
somersault on the tightrope call-
ed for a fair amount of heavy
breathing and a rolling of drums.
But I saw one of the Daghestan
lads calmly somersaulting on to
the shoulders of someone stand-
ing on the shoulders of some-
one else. True, he had a spring-
board take-off, but even the

. Springboard was on tightrope!

They tell me that nearly every
Daghestan village has| a_tight-
rope; the ground in few places
is level enough for track ath-
letics, and orinary sports, so why
keep on the ground?

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — AUGUST 26, 1955 — PAGE 9