Despatch from John W. Dulanty to Joseph P. Walshe (Dublin)
(No. 105) (Secret)

At his request I met Mr. Malcolm MacDonald yesterday evening at the Dominions Office. He told me that just before the British Parliament adjourned for the Christmas Recess certain members of Parliament came to him with questions which they were anxious to put on the Constitutional situation which had arisen through our legislation about King Edward VIII being one day later than the rest of the Commonwealth, resulting in the grotesque anomaly of King Edward being King with us when he was no longer King with the British. Mr. MacDonald had dissuaded them from putting the questions in to the Speaker, urging that the reason why our Bill was not passed earlier was owing to the obvious physical impossibility of the Dáil being convened before it was. The British members, however, were very insistent and Mr. MacDonald said that in the last resort he secured the withdrawal of their questions by promising them that he would confirm his statement as to the physical impossibility of convening the Dáil earlier. He made it clear to them that if I did not think my Government would authorise me to answer his question then he certainly would not put the question. Both his letter to me and a letter in reply would, he said, be private and would not be subject to publication in any form.

I said I was rather surprised at the request. The whole situation arising from King Edward's action was completely abnormal, the President had assembled the Dáil at an almost impossibly short notice and had put through legislation at a speed which left the Government open to embarrassing criticism. All this, as I had previously explained to Mr. MacDonald, the President had done as an act of assistance to the British and it seemed to me that the attitude of the members to whom he referred showed a complete lack of appreciation of an act of co-operation on our part. In view of the unexpectedness of the situation and of our subsequent action I was not clear as to what precisely was his difficulty about answering the suggested questions.

Mr. MacDonald agreed entirely with what I had said about assistance and co-operation. His real difficulty, he said, was that the questioners would bring up the point of the divisibility of the Crown and that whatever answer he gave would be sure to cause trouble, because the Union of South Africa on the one hand held that the Crown was divisible whilst other member-States of the British Commonwealth held that the Crown was indivisible. He wanted to avoid the questions being put because he thought that whatever answer he gave would lead to difficulties without, so far as he could see, any compensating good resulting.

Obviously, I said, this was a matter for reference to my Government. Mr. MacDonald agreed and said that he would let me have a draft letter so that I could tell him whether it was possible to send him the reply on the lines he had indicated.

He next raised the question of the Coronation oath and said that he supposed the President would hardly agree with the Oath in its present form. At first I thought he was referring to the Oath in which the religious factor is introduced but I found as the conversation went on that he was referring to the necessity for altering the existing Oath in which the King undertakes to govern 'the United Kingdom and the Dominions belonging thereto.' Had I any idea as to what was the President's view as to the form of the Oath. I said that I had no information except to say that of course we could never accept a formula such as that in the Coronation Oath taken by George V., and in a country which was predominantly Catholic it could not fail to be against the individual and collective conscience of the people even to do no more than witness an Oath in which the King swore to belong to the Protestant faith.

Mr. MacDonald said that he was leaving town for a few days and that any information I could give him as to the President's attitude towards the Coronation Oath would be helpful. He was hoping in the Christmas Recess to study this question in the hope of reaching some formula which might commend itself to all the member-States of the Commonwealth.