My French barber says one day, as his razor wanders round my Adam’s apple, “I go. Zees country is no good to me.”
“What’s up?” I ask, speaking like a ventriloquist.
“I go out zees morning. I go by Merrion Square, and a young man come up to me and look into my face, and he say, ‘Life is sweet.’ ‘It ees,’ I sez, and turn round and come back home. He have mistook me for some one else. I take no more reesks. I stay here with ze door locked until I can sell ze beesness.”
An acquaintance of mine is rung up on the telephone. “Who’s there?” he asks.
“Irish Republican Army Headquarters speaking. You have been observed going about with Captain Jones. This acquaintance must cease.”
“Captain Jones is——”
“The conversation is closed.”
Captain Jones wonders why he has lost a friend.
Some one else receives with his breakfast egg the following warning. “You are ordered by the Republican Authorities to leave the country within thirty-six hours. If this order is not complied with, you will be suitably dealt with. By Order.—I.R.A.”
But threat and intimidation were not the privilege of one faction. The following reminder was received by a number of the members of Dail Eireann, the Republican Parliament, which met when it could in secret session—