Letter from Robert Brennan to Joseph P. Walshe (Dublin)
(108/8/41)

I called on Lord Halifax¹ on Friday last. He asked me about Irish opinion in the United States and I told him that generally speaking the Irish here were favourable to the aid to Britain policy of the Administration, but that they were very anxious that Ireland should preserve her neutrality. He asked if there were any solution to the question of the Irish ports, and I pointed out the usual objections, the main ones being that any cession of the ports would immediately invite a blitzkrieg, and that such occupation would jeopardize Irish independence. I told him that very few people here who were interested in the question believed that if Mr. Churchill were to take the ports he would voluntarily hand them back again. He asked if Ireland were provided with defences would that have any effect, and I said that it would not. He then wondered whether any arrangement could be come to whereby a solution of the partition problem could be bargained against occupation, and I gave a reply similar to that given by Mr. de Valera on a previous occasion that we could not barter one right for another.

He then asked me what I thought would be the fate of Ireland if England went down, and Germany was triumphant. I said that would be an academic question for the Irish people if previously they had been annihilated, and that they would be in a better position to meet such aggression, if any, if they emerged from the war comparatively strong and healthy.

He is not as easy to talk to as his predecessor² was.