Letter from Frederick H. Boland to Joseph P. Walshe (Holy See)
(Confidential)

The Taoiseach was very interested in the contents of your report of the 27th January regarding your conversation with Cardinal Hlond.¹

I need hardly say that there is no prospect whatever of our recognising the Polish Government in Warsaw in present circumstances. In view of the developments which have taken place during the last six months, such a gratuitous act of appeasement would be not only inopportune but ridiculous, because the question nowadays is not why other States should withhold recognition from the new Governments of Eastern Europe, but whether these States which have established diplomatic relations with them will find it possible to maintain them! We may be faced with that difficulty if Masaryk² ceases to be Foreign Minister in Czechoslovakia and a Communist takes his place.

In any case, what is clear is that, whatever reasons we may have had for considering the recognition of the Warsaw Government in the past, we have none at all now.