Letter from Joseph P. Walshe to David Gray (Dublin)
(Draft)

Dear David,
I have gone through the questions and answers which you sent me on the 3rd September. ² I see that you are already giving the answers as set out and I am afraid that the ‘off-the-record’ qualification does not make some of them less harmful for the mutual interests of our countries. As you were good enough to let me know quite frankly the line you were taking with visiting American correspondents, I feel I owe it to you to write in the frankest possible manner what I think.

For convenience sake, I shall take your questions in their order.

1. What evidence have you for the statement that the revival of the Irish Republican Army was being encouraged by the Axis Powers? You say ‘this reorganisation is supposed to have taken place in the United States.’ You rely on a mere hypothesis for such a serious statement.

‘The Germans must presumably have tried unsuccessfully to interest the Irish Government before turning to the Irish Republican Army movement. What proposals they have made I have never heard.’ The Germans never made the slightest effort to interest the Irish Government. But again, is ‘must presumably’ a safe and responsible basis for such a story? Your experience has surely taught you that journalists leave out these little trimmings when passing on the news. Is the story though based on a mere presumption, made better currency by the addition that you never heard what the proposals were. If I didn’t know your good intentions in carrying out your duties and your friendly feelings towards this country, I would have described your ‘must presumably’ as a poison carrier. You go on to tell the journalists the highly fantastic story about the German gift of two English counties for the control of England (by Ireland forsooth!) and then you add on the flimsiest argument that there is ‘inherent probability’ in the story. Some of your journalist listeners must have a real difficulty in finding a motive for this sort of thing.

2. Even in this apparently harmless paragraph, you reserve the other members of the Government out of the Taoiseach's condemnation of the invasion of Belgium. Why? ³

4. The assumption arising from this piece of information for the journalists is that there may be quite a large number of I.R.A. men serving in Ireland as German Agents. No I.R.A. man has been captured coming down in a parachute or landing in a boat. What kind of logic is it to assume that many parachutists have not been captured and that these imaginary non-captured parachutists are very real I.R.A. German Agents? Surely you force me to put myself the question whether such twisted logic is intended to convey the truth about Ireland or, being twisted, whether it could do any good to either your country or mine.

5. Once you make convenient assumptions, the rest of your romancing becomes relatively easy. This paragraph 5 is characteristic of the information you say you give to the journalists. You begin by assuming that there is an organisation of German Secret Agents in Ireland and you say immediately afterwards that you have very little information as to their methods of operation. You ‘think it is correct to say that they probably finance such I.R.A. groups and activities as have escaped internment by the Government’; but after the semi-colon, you leave the realm of assumption and opinion and you say quite definitely ‘they stir up anti-British feeling whenever possible.’ Then you return to your innuendo and you say ‘they were probably active at the time of the last German bombing of Dublin.’ However, in this case you introduced ‘a very intelligent I.R.A. woman’, who told you it would be proved that the English did it. Is it not possible that the logic of the paragraph was constructed on this accidental meeting? Is your knowledge of Ireland so exiguous that you believe that German agents are necessary to stir up anti-British feeling after a public announcement by the British Government that they intended to impose conscription on our fellow-countrymen in the Six Counties? Are the Irish not to be allowed to express their national feelings like the people of any other nation?

6. It can’t be that your opinion of the Irish people is so low as to believe that their Government has to base its policy on the principle of fear. Your attempt to establish a relation between President Roosevelt’s statements and the dropping of bombs in Ireland belongs to the sphere of the astrologer. Frankly I have met nobody – in Ireland or England – who believes in it.

7. ‘I am told he spent a considerable time in Germany and presumably is sympathetic to the German cause.’ What a perfect non-sequitur! Moreover, the official in question was never in Germany. He did spend some time in Geneva in our office there. At the end of the Great War, he was in the British Air Force. ⁴ But this sentence carries us even further than a mere departure from truth and logic. It is a grave injustice. It would be an injustice in private conversation. It is much worse, when you pass it on to journalists to form the background of their views on our Censorship and on the staff who operate it so conscientiously. With regard to your remarks about suppression of portion of episcopal pastorals, the public utterances of Cardinal Hinsley and anti-Hitler pronouncements in the ‘Osservatore Romano’, and the contrast which you see between this treatment and that accorded to Cardinal MacRory’s pastoral, you should remember that Cardinal MacRory’s pastoral referred to the ever present injustice of British rule in the Six Counties and had nothing to do with the issue of neutrality. There was no general inclination to condemn the German bombings as a wanton deliberate act because, in effect, the majority of our people believed that such was not the case. They reasoned that if the German Government seriously intended to bomb Ireland, the tragedies would have been far greater and would have occurred far more frequently. They were strengthened in this reasoning by the parallel of British and German bombings in Sweden and Switzerland which neither the Swiss nor the Swedes believed to be deliberate. Condemnation of Britain for proposing to apply conscription to Northern Ireland is in an entirely different category. You must allow to the Irish people the right to be pro-Irish and to defend themselves. Your general thesis seems to be that we cannot be pro-Irish without being pro- German and you sometimes seem to think that unless we are pro-anything you personally happen to think is good for us we are pro-German. I don’t understand what you mean by saying that the ‘Standard’ is allowed to print anti-Allied and anti-American items. You can’t expect a paper like the ‘Standard’ to say that all the Russians are saints if most people, including most Americans, have been saying until quite recently that they were all sinners.

8. You have not attached the Italian radio bulletin of the 20th July, 1941, and we have no bulletin of that date on our files. Perhaps you would be good enough to look it up again. What you call the Irish elements in America are America’s business, but I understand they regard themselves as being just as good Americans as any other group. If any of them have marched in a demonstration of protest against the infringement of Irish neutrality they seem to me to be supporting the very good principle of the rights of small nations to determine their own way of life. It is not at all necessary to assume that such a demonstration would have had to be inspired by Axis propagandists. I can’t believe you really mean to say that a demonstration of this character brands those who take part in it as hostile to American interests. We in this country would never dream of regarding your country as imbued with the reactionary sentiments implied in this view, and you should not feel that you have been a failure in Ireland because you have failed to convince the Irish Government of such a proposition. Mr. Aiken while in America spoke invariably to members of the public or of Congress who were favourable to the Administration, and he asked their intervention with your Government in order to secure arms for the defence of this democracy. In asking the sympathy of Americans for the preservation of the neutrality and independence of Ireland, Mr. Aiken was appealing to the most sacred principles of liberty which have continued to be laid down by your great men since the American Republic was established. Is it possible that because they sympathise with the aspirations of this country to govern its own destiny, Irish-Americans must be branded by you as pro-German or anti-British? Do you not feel that in promulgating these views from the important post which you occupy in this country, you are doing precisely that thing which you accuse our Government of doing, namely, playing pressure politics within the territory of another State? Our appeal to the American people, and it was always answered, was for help to establish and subsequently to maintain and develop our independence. Your pressure policy here consists of an effort to impose on the Irish people a course of action which they know would deprive them of that independence. You can hardly mean to insinuate by what you say in this paragraph that ex-President Hoover and a great many other distinguished Isolationists are one whit less American than you are. Why must Irish-American Isolationists be pro-German and anti-British in your eyes? The freedom of the human spirit about which you spoke to me must provide for even Irish-Americans being Irish and American without being pro-German.

9. Would the Tralee paper have been all right if, besides reprinting an article from the American ‘Readers’ Digest’ it had taken the photograph of a German General from another American paper? Why of necessity must the article have been supplied by a German Agent? I don’t know which paper you refer to later in the paragraph but are you not going too far in blaming it for printing Cardinal O’Connell’s address? It is true that the regular news services do not send Isolationist news to Ireland, but the enterprise of a paper that gets round this Censorship of American news for Ireland has something to be said for it. It isn’t for that reason pro-German. Again, I can’t help referring to the danger of assuming that every Irish point of view must necessarily be pro- German because it is Irish. That looks very like a rule invented ad hoc.

10. The ‘Irish Press’ to which you are obviously referring doesn’t play up Isolationist and anti-British news. I never saw a reference in it which indicated resentment of America’s aid to Britain. If it is this non-existent attitude of the ‘Irish Press’ which prevents you getting things for Ireland which you would like to get, clearly our chances of getting anything from the United States through you are exceedingly poor.

11. We should like to have more particulars about the Nazi activities in Ireland to which you refer in this paragraph. When you say that the head of the German spy system is presumably some agent unknown to the public, you must be quite certain that there is such a head since your presumption only covers his incognito.

12. Although you say you have no means of knowing whether the Axis spy system in Ireland is effective, you tell your journalists that there is every reason why it should be efficient and extremely important. You go on to say – still having no means of knowing whether the Axis spy system is efficient – that it must be impossible to prevent sending the information useful to Germany out of England with the hundreds of people travelling backwards and forward. Once it arrives here, you say, the German Legation can sent it through. Moreover, you add that everything of importance could be passed along very quickly and fully. What a pretty story! and all founded on acknowledged ignorance.

I have come to the end of your questions and I have made very little effort to mince matters. I have the friendliest feelings towards you personally and that is the reason why I feel obliged to be absolutely frank with you. In any case, in order to be loyal to my own beliefs as an Irishman, I am in principle bound to tell you that the attitude displayed by you in the information which you say you give to American journalists is, in spite of your good intentions, most inimical to my Government and to the Irish people. These journalists are bound to leave our shores with a background of hostility inspired by the insinuation and innuendo which characterises all you tell them about this country in relation to the war. When you read over again these questions and answers, I feel that you will say to yourself that you are doing this ancient nation a very grave injustice. Our life is at stake, and you should realize that by spreading such views about us amongst your own people you are serving no good cause. Both countries are no doubt approaching a crisis in their destinies. That crisis is more vital for us than for you because of our weakness. At such a moment we should all try to create harmony and friendship. That, after all, is your real mission. You cannot do it if you do not try to understand feelings and opinions built upon centuries of history and experience. Only with such an attitude of understanding can the crisis be bridged over and real and lasting harmony and understanding established between our Governments. I deliberately say governments because there is no question about the good feelings existing between our peoples.

If you really feel that your interest in this – not the least of the motherlands of the American people – is limited by the passions and prejudices of the present moment, perhaps you ought – in fairness to both countries – review your position. This is, of course, a purely personal suggestion, but the whole character of your notes forces the conviction upon me that your prejudices make it impossible for you to be the instrument through which a proper balance of goodwill can be established between our two Governments. You have fallen into the fatal error of believing that the interests of a small nation are less sacred than those of countries great in size and population. Such a philosophy holds no future for the world, and I can’t see how it can be made a basis for friendship and co-operation between us. Mutual respect between nations is just as necessary for the peace of the world as mutual respect between human beings for normal intercourse. There is a fund of wisdom in the motto ‘Live and let live.’ Can’t we practise it?

Yours sincerely,
[unsigned]