ity's on strike."

That explained my inability to get Limerick on the wire. From Kildare I had
been trying all morning to reach Limerick on the telephone. All the
Limerick shops I passed were blinded or shuttered. In the gray light, black
lines of people moved desolately up and down, not allowed to congregate and
apparently not wanting to remain in homes they were weary of. A few candles
flickered in windows. After leaving my suitcase at a hotel, I left for the
strike headquarters. On my way I neared Sarsfield bridge. Between it and
me, there loomed a great black mass. Close to it, I found it was a tank,
stenciled with the name of Scotch-and-Soda, and surrounded by massed barbed
wire inside a wooden fence. On the bridge, the guards paraded up and down
and called to the people:

"Step to the road!"

At the door of a river street house, I mounted gritty stone steps. A
red-badged man opened the door part way. As soon as I told him I was an
American journalist, the suspicious look on his face vanished. With much
cordiality he invited me to come upstairs. While he knocked on a
consultation door, he bade me wait. In the wavering hall light, the knots
in the worn wooden floor threw blots of shadow. On an invitation to come
in, I entered a badly lit room where workingmen sat at a long black
scratched table. In the empty chair at the end of the table opposite the
chairman, I was invited to sit down. As I asked my questions, every head
was turned down towards me as if the strike committee was having its
picture taken and everybody wanted to get in it.

"Yes, this is a soviet," said John Cronin, the carpenter who was father of
the baby soviet. "Why did we form it? Why do we pit people's rule against
military rule? Of course, as workers, we are against all military. But our
particular grievance against the British military is this: when the town
was unjustly proclaimed, the cordon was drawn to leave out a factory part
of town that lies beyond the bridges. We had to ask the soldiers for
permits to earn our daily bread.

"You have seen how we have thrown the crank into production. But some
activities are permitted to continue. Bakers are working under our orders.
The kept press is killed, but we have substituted our own paper." He held
up a small sheet which said in large letters: The Workers' Bulletin Issued
by the Limerick Proletariat.

"We've distributed food and slashed prices. The farmers send us their
produce. The food co