As always, extremely interesting, brilliant pieces interspersed with things putting my remaining teeth on edge.
Two Emeritus Professors from Lancaster University one a Psychologist, and one a Physicist recall Edwin Schrodinger -“Scientist, Dubliner and More.”
A refugee from Hitler’s Germany, the German Physicist accepted Eamon De Valera’s invitation to become a Director of the School of Theoretical Physics at the Dublin lnstitute of Advanced Studies.
The School was founded by De Valera, a Mathematician, who had the wit to realise that some advanced studies could be pursued by scholars with nothing more expensive than paper and and fountain pens.
Neither of the Emeritus Professors specialises in history, nor has much of a clue about Ireland, nor writes
English with style – “In December 1939 the academic vagrant Schrodinger arrived in Dublin to be greeted by his host, de Valera, mathematician and Gaeilgeoir enthusiast,”
They sneer that the Institute had “an inevitable School of Celtic Studies.”
Their article starts -“On the cusp of 1940, Ireland was suffering from economic hardship, especially
evident in the tenements of the urban poor in Dublin and Cork ” and it blames De Valera’s Government
enervating the economy.
Dev had come to power in 1932 and whilst Steinbeck was writing “The Grapes of Wrath” and Orwell
“The Road to Wigan Pier” and Knight of the Bath Mussolini was paying for the rape of Abyssinia into
the coffers of the British owned Suez Canal Company for the Rapists’ passage through it with their
lethal equipment Dev had been busy.
High quality local authority housing in unprecedented numbers had been built, virtually all of it still
standing. The industrial workforce had been greatly increased and they wee statuarily entitled to one
week’s annual leave, before the UK provided the same. The oath of allegiance to the British Monarch
had been abolished without acrimony, a Sovereign Democratic State with a Republican constitution
had been enacted by the electorate, Cork Harbour, Bantry Bay and Lough Swilly had been ceded to
Irish control, all without the shedding of a drop of blood..
De Valera’s statecraft made possible my conception and birth in 1941 and those of my generation
who were spared the misery of the Second World War – a disaster assisted by Britain’s promotion
of Mussolini and to an extent of Hitler.
Amongst Dev’s harshest Irish Critics was THE IRISH TIMES.
In February 1933 it forecast disaster to Ireland if Dev was returned to power in Dublin/
In March 1933 it welcomed the accession to power of Hitler in Berlin. – “Herr Hitler’s Way”
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