Letter from Joseph P. Walshe to Daniel A. Binchy (Berlin)
(E.A. 231/4/41) (Copy)¹

The Minister is exceedingly gratified with the success of your Irish publicity campaign in Berlin during the last three months. Your article in the Berliner Tageblatt on the Language revival so impressed him that he wants to have it reproduced in the United States, France and Italy. Would there be any difficulty in having that done? Will you please say in your next despatch. We should send it to the officers concerned. The Minister was particularly pleased with the way in which you attacked our fundamental enemy in every country, namely, the idea that we are a sort of bastard English nation with no distinctive ancestry or civilisation of our own. Unfortunately, outside the learned few, Germany seems to have been just as ignorant as France on all Irish affairs, except the purely political. The general attitude of the Press since your arrival is most hopeful. It would be too much to expect that there should be no exception. There are 'Welt am Abend' journals and Max Tamm journalists in every country.

As for your lectures to the International Students Association, to the American Chamber of Commerce and to the League of Nations, the Minister is in entire agreement with the lines you have followed. Your lecture to the League of Nations got a good deal of publicity here. The Minister has asked me to convey to you his special congratulations for the manner in which you have been carrying out the most important part of your task, namely, that of securing the good will and esteem of the German people for the Irish Free State.

I hope you will not hesitate to ask for whatever information may be needed by you in your work. Our work at home is becoming gradually better organised, and we shall soon be in a position to give more time to our missions abroad.