coal on her shoulders. A
donkey cart with a movie poster reading: "Working Under Order of the Strike
Committee: GOD AND MAN," rolled past. A child hugging a pot of Easter
lilies shuffled by. "There's no idea that the people want communism. There
can't be. The people here are Catholics."

But a little incident of the strike impressed me with the fact that there
were communists among these fervent Catholics. In order to pictorialize the
predicament of the Limerick workers to the world through the journalists
who were gathered in Limerick waiting the hoped-for arrival of the first
transatlantic plane, the national executive council devised this plan. One
bright spring afternoon, the amusement committee placed poster
announcements of a hurling match that was to be held just outside of
Limerick at Caherdavin. About one thousand people, mostly Irish boys and
girls, left town. At sunset, two by two, girls with yellow primroses at
their waists, and boys with their hurling sticks in their hands, marched
down the white-walled Caherdavin road towards the bridge. The bridge guard
hooped his arm towards the boat house occupied by the military. Soldiers,
strapping on cartridge belts, double-quicked to his aid. A machine gun
sniffed the air from the upper story of the boat house. Scotch-and-Soda
veered heavily bridgewards. A squad of fifty helmeted constables marched to
the bridge, and marked time. But the boys and girls merely asked if they
might go home, and when they were refused, turned about again and kept up a
circling tramp, requesting admission. Down near the Broken Treaty Stone, in
St. Munchin's Temperance hall, in a room half-filled with potatoes and eggs
and milk, women who were to care for the exiles during their temporary
banishment, were working. A few of the workers' red-badged guards came to
herald the approach of the workers, and then sat down on a settle outside
the hall.

St. Munchin's chapel bell struck the Angelus.

The red-badged guards rose and blessed themselves.

THE BISHOP ON COMMUNISM

Possibly, I thought, the clergymen of Limerick were hurried into support of
red labor. What was the attitude of those who had a perspective on the
situation towards communism?

Just outside Limerick, in the town of Ennis in the county of Clare--Clare
as well as Kerry has the reputation of shooting down informers at
sight--there dwells the most loved bishop in Ireland. The Lenten pastoral
of the Right Reverend Michae