Letter from John W. Dulanty to Joseph P. Walshe (Dublin)
(Secret and Confidential)

Sir Robert Vansittart, Permanent Under Secretary at the Foreign Office, told me today that so far as the League position was concerned there would not be very much movement until the recommendation of the Committee which is to report tomorrow had been considered by the several Ministers.

He went on to speak in what seemed to me fairly free language about the French. The root difficulty he thought was that whereas the British and other people saw in the League of Nations an instrument for the preservation of universal peace, the French thought of the League merely as a help to them against Germany. If the British had at any time suggested a course to the French which was really dangerous to French interests, M. Laval's hesitation would be better understood; in fact, the British had never done anything of the kind.

I asked whether he thought there were any real grounds for the suggestion that M. Laval had given Mussolini a private hint that the French would not oppose the Duce's having a free hand in Abyssinia. M. Laval, Sir Robert Vansittart said, was what is known in America as a 'fixer'. 'You know the kind of man', he said 'who is ready to ?fix? anything to get an immediate solution, and I think it is not at all unlikely that Laval said to Mussolini in the most vague and general of terms enough to lead the latter to think that the French might not embarrass him in Abyssinia'. Sir Robert Vansittart emphasised however that this was merely his own private impression and depended on intuition and not on any direct information.

What answer, I inquired, could be made to the man in the street who asked why the British were so resolute upon sanctions for Italy on the Abyssinian question when within such recent memory they had stood by in conspicuous inactivity on the Japanese freebooter in Manchukuo. Sir Robert Vansittart said that both the press and the public in Britain gave the Government strong criticism for their inactivity. The British however had but a few light cruisers in the East. Singapore was unfinished and even the most zealous supporter of the League would not have wished to see the British alone take naval or military action against the Japanese. The League, he had to confess, had failed to function on that occasion - notwithstanding the fact that the Japs tore up a Treaty. But when you had Mussolini coming along and tearing up five Treaties you could not remain inactive any longer. That the British Government were right in this view might be seen by the support of their people in the Trades Unions, the Church Congress, the Non-Conformist Religious Bodies, and by practically every responsible leader of thought in Great Britain.

But I asked whether an intelligent foreigner might not be excused for thinking that this sudden wave of altruism on the part of the British was too new and sudden a conversion to be convincing. Whatever else might be said about the British in the past they had never even pretended to altruism. The Permanent Under Secretary said that that was the view being taken by many people on the Continent but he thought it was a mistaken view. So far as he knew the mind of the Secretary of State and the British Government their present attitude was so altruistic as to be a little puzzling even to a Britisher, let alone a foreigner, but he assured me that none the less that was the true position.

I asked him next about the possibility of an incident being so arranged by Mussolini, in a last desperate throw, to involve the British in hostilities. He said that he doubted whether, for all his alleged unbalanced mind, Mussolini would attack the British. Nevertheless if he did attack them they were ready and he doubted whether even M. Laval could stand out and refuse assistance if Mussolini went to that improbable length.

Sir Robert Vansittart said that they had been greatly encouraged by the line which the President had taken at Geneva. Speaking for himself he said that he quite realised that in taking the line he did the President had no more idea of supporting the British Government than he had of flying to the moon. Whilst some of the smaller States stood to gain considerably from the League he did not think - and here he was giving his private opinion only - that either the British or the Irish stood to gain much from the League except in so far as it proved an instrument to prevent war. Today it was incumbent on every¹ nation to make its own contribution. One country might be prepared to put up - merely as a figure of illustration - say £1,000, another might only be able to afford them half that, but for his part he would accept even £10 or £5 contributions with the object of showing the world that there was at least a contribution from all.

Whatever the cynics here or abroad might think the rock bottom truth in his opinion was that in England there was a belief and a hope in the League which had almost the form and emotion of a religion.