Letter from Frederick H. Boland to Joseph P. Walshe (Dublin)

The past two days have been mainly devoted to the general discussion in the Assembly, so that there is not much to add to my report of the 10th.¹

The President met his Commission for the first time on Tuesday, but the proceedings were of a purely formal character. The members of the Commission include the heads of most of the delegations, and, when the Commission assembled for its first meeting, most of the members including Aloisi, Herriot, Viscount Cranborne, Dr Koht (the new Norwegian Foreign Minister) etc. made themselves known to the President and congratulated him upon his appointment as Chairman of the Commission.

The President broadcasted to America last night on the Colombia system as arranged. I enclose the text of what he said,² which was sent over the telephone to the 'Irish Press' before the broadcast by its special correspondent here, Miss Dorothy Macardle. Owing to atmospheric interferences, it was found necessary at the last moment to send the broadcast by land line to Rugby to be broadcasted to America from that station. The report which we subsequently received from America was to the effect that there was 'good intelligibility'.

The talk of Geneva is the speech made in the Assembly yesterday by Sir Samuel Hoare. It is generally agreed to be a very remarkable speech, and its terms lost nothing by the manner in which Sir Samuel, who is a rather peppery person with a characteristic habit of hitting the desk with his open hand, delivered it. Everybody is now waiting to hear what M. Laval will have to say when he addresses the Assembly tomorrow. The general impression here is that, both on account of the difficulties of his internal situation and for other reasons, M. Laval is getting more and more impatient with the Italian attitude and is being reluctantly driven nearer to the British point of view.

The President has at present an open mind as to whether he will speak in the Assembly at all and, if so, as to what he will say. In this he will be to some extent influenced by the trend of M. Lavals speech tomorrow. But I think it is probable that he will not allow the general discussion in the Assembly to close without saying something and that, in that event, he will speak tomorrow afternoon or Saturday morning.

In the meantime, we are all very busy; there is the usual rush of demands for interviews, etc. and the work of the Commissions absorbs a great deal of our time. I may perhaps add as a final comment that at the moment it looks as if the manoeuvre set on foot to keep the Italo-Abyssinian dispute away from the Assembly is going to fail. In those circumstances, a very heavy burden may be thrown upon the President in his capacity as Chairman of the 6th Commission.