I.R.A. Ire

"I don't care what sentence I get," said Prisoner Peter Stuart in the dock of a London court last week, "because the fight will go on." Peter got 15 years. Michael Joseph Mason got 17. Seven of their friends got 59 1/2 among them. Their crime: being good soldiers of the Irish Republican Army--i.e., bomb-planters.

The political reasoning behind I. R. A.'s English bombings is about as involved as a Rube Goldberg invention: 1) one of I. R. A.'s 15,000 members gets a job in England as a mechanic, poster painter, motorman; 2) he plants a bomb in a place where it will raise merry hell but probably kill no one; 3) the terrified English people put pressure on the Government; 4) the Government cedes Northern Ireland to Eire; 5) a unified Irish Republic is formed, which will be so anti-British that it will take sides against Britain in the next big war. So far, of course, I. R. A.'s eccentric machine has worked only so far as Step 2. The British people have been angered but not scared by the Army, which is illegal in both Eire and Britain. Last week's trial was the severest measure England has yet taken to keep the machine from working at all.

Wary after threats from all nine sentenced men, London last week put a strong guard around the house of the judge who presided at the trial. But I. R. A. terror, like poison ivy, breaks out in strange places. Late that night, motorists and pedestrians going sleepily home over Hammersmith Bridge, the farthest up-Thames within London, were rocked by a sudden Boom! Suspension chains snapped, a support-girder sagged, windows 100 yards away on the north bank crashed to the street. Bam! In mid-bridge another blast shook the 52-year-old structure from tower to tower. The whole span drooped a foot below its usual level.

As traffic was detoured. pending an examination, officials hesitated to jump to the conclusion that "the fight" was going on so soon after the trial. But next day there was no doubt left. In Fleet Street, centre of London's newspaper offices, the presses were grinding out morning editions. Suddenly came a bomb's heavy thud. Part of the News-Chronicle office crumbled. No one was hurt but. when the presses were stopped, it was discovered that one story they had been running off was a gloating little piece about Michael Joseph Mason's 17-year sentence, Peter Stuart's 15 years, and their seven friends who got 59 1/2 among them.

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