Letter from John J. Hearne to Frederick H. Boland (Dublin)
(Strictly Private)

My dear Fred,
Your strictly private letter of the 21st August¹ reached me in course of airmail on the 25th. The Taoiseach disembarked at New York a day or two afterwards. He was with us in Montreal before I had time to send you a reply. We had not a spare moment during his Canadian tour which ended on the 19th September. I have been ill with flu ever since. Mona² and two of the children have also been laid low of the same illness.

I sent you some sort of account of the Kingsmere conversation³ in reply to your telegram No. 93.⁴ I hope it arrived in time for the Minister's meeting in Paris. Pearson, by the way, is not to go to Paris for this week as he has a by-election on his hands.

Your letter was, if I may respectfully say so, most timely and helpful. The Taoiseach's pronouncements in Canada accorded, without any suggestion by the Mission, with the Minister's views covered so fully in your letter. He announced to his press conference in Ottawa on the 7th September the forthcoming repeal of the External Relations Act. He emphasised to Mr. Mackenzie King and his colleagues at Kingsmere the factual and spiritual relationship between Ireland and Canada. He made it clear that an association on the basis of the constitutional link of the Crown was out of the question. And he adverted to the constructive character of our national policy in that connection. His public statements and private conversations were not too 'Commonwealthish' in the sense the Minister wished him to avoid. And in his major address (to the Bar Association) he dwelt upon the broader concept of our new relations with British Commonwealth countries which might form the basis for an association of sovereign, independent democratic States like-minded with ourselves to promote and protect the pattern of life for which our people and the people of Canada have been known. This part of the Taoiseach's Bar Association speech was singled out for wide publicity across the continent.

I am glad, therefore, to be able to report to you that the Taoiseach's Canadian addresses accorded fully (without any suggestion from me) with the Minister's views as stated to me in your letter of the 21st August. I have, as you desired, treated your letter as, in all respects, strictly private and exclusively personal to me.

I assume that as the Taoiseach will, in the normal course, be reporting on his visit to the Cabinet there would be nothing I could appropriately add.

I hope the Taoiseach will give you as good an account of us as he can. He appeared to be quite pleased with the preparations we made for his reception. You know, however, of old, how much he would wish to overlook my shortcomings.