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    "label": "Report, Central Intelligence Agency, Ireland, Situation Report 48",
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    "title": "Report, Central Intelligence Agency, Ireland, Situation Report 48",
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{
    "seq": 9,
    "pageIndex": 0,
    "type": "photo",
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    "ocrText": "SECRET\nin Dublin as Dail Eireann*, issued a Declaration of Independence, and set up a Govern-\nment of the Irish Republic. The two years of exhausting guerrilla warfare that followed\nended in compromise: the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921-known to Irishmen simply as\nthe Treaty-which provided for the establishment of the Irish Free State. The Free\nState, however, did not include all of Ireland; the six northeastern counties of Ulster\nchose to remain a part of the United Kingdom. Nor was it a Republic, for the Treaty\nprovided that it was to have the status of a dominion of the British Commonwealth.\nBut the Treaty settlement was nevertheless accepted by a majority of Irishmen, and\nin 1922 under W. T. Cosgrave the first Government of the Irish Free State assumed office.\nTo Cosgrave and his supporters, who remained in power for ten years, the Treaty\nafforded \"freedom to achieve freedom\". Their administration was conservative and\nprimarily concerned with the problem of restoring internal stability. In the first two\nyears of the Cosgrave Government guerilla warfare was waged against the Free State\nby remnants of the Irish Republican Army who had vowed to continue the struggle for\na united Ireland completely independent of the United Kingdom. The bitterness\ngenerated by the \"Civil War\" still plagues Irish politics.\nEven after the restoration of tranquillity the republicans, most of them now organ-\nized into the Fianna Fail party under Eamon De Valera, a principal leader in the\nstruggle for independence, boycotted the Free State Government. Until 1927 the elected\nFianna Fail deputies refused to take the oath prescribed for Dail deputies on the ground\nthat it was an oath of allegiance to the King. Finally, in 1927, the oath was sworn-\nas an \"empty political formula\"-and De Valera led Fianna Fail into the Dail. In 1932\nhe formed the Government that was to remain in power for the next sixteen years.\nThe pro-Commonwealth policies of the Cosgrave Government were reversed. Fianna\nFail envisaged complete Irish political and economic independence. A discontinuance\nof certain land annuity payments to the British precipitated a tariff war and a general\ndeterioration of Anglo-Irish relations. The land annuities dispute was settled in 1938\nand a trade agreement concluded; the British also relinquished the three naval bases\nin Ireland reserved under the Treaty. Meanwhile, Fianna Fail had been only partially\nsuccessful in its program to lessen economic dependence on the United Kingdom by\nfostering Irish industrial development. But it had proceeded far with the implementa-\ntion of its nationalistic aims. By the time of the adoption of the present Constitution\nin 1937, the functions of the Crown in Irish domestic affairs had been completely dis-\ncarded and in external affairs there remained only a very tenuous link with the Com-\nmonwealth.\nThe 1930's were also turbulent years internally, with armed political demonstra-\ntions and even terrorism not uncommon. Before the formation of the Fianna Fail\nParty, De Valera had broken with the militant extremists of the Irish Republican\nArmy (IRA); but, in office, he was reluctant to suppress them and he lifted the ban\nimposed under Cosgrave. The IRA had remained active and armed while illegal; and\nnow, in a time of depression and deteriorated relations with the United Kingdom, it\nbecame a serious menace. During this period an unarmed counter organization,\n* Literally, \"Assembly of Ireland\".\n5\nSECRET"
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