Letter from Joseph P. Walshe to Hugh C. Brady (Dublin)

Dear Mr. Brady,

It would be perhaps just as well to let Mr. Dillon know that we have not in the strict sense a monitoring service. We did consider the question, but we found that the trouble, time and expenditure involved would not repay us for the smallness of the results to be achieved. We do try, amongst ourselves in the Department, to arrange that Haw-Haw's¹ evening broadcasts, or at least the two principal ones (8.30 and 10.30 Irish time), are listened to by one of our principal officers. As I myself have to spend most evenings at home so as to be easily available on the telephone, I hardly ever miss hearing at least one of them. I do not take a note unless his reference to Ireland has some special significance or is likely to be misunderstood and/or to form the subject of disturbing rumour. The most recent example coming within this latter category was Haw-Haw's reference to a news item in an American paper concerning the alleged dropping of threatening leaflets on Dublin. Haw-Haw frequently alludes to Ireland as one of a series of countries (usually named) which have been persecuted by Great Britain.

There was nothing striking in what he said on Thursday night.

On Friday night, 27th June, there was a reference from the station known as the Christian Peace Movement station to Irish opinion on Russia's entry into the war, but again it had no special significance.

Mr. Dillon will have heard the B.B.C. constantly denying that Haw-Haw had made statements attributed to him in regard to the bombing of this or that area in Great Britain. Yesterday, the West Regional Director of the B.B.C. declared at Bristol that 'these alleged particularities and warnings from Haw- Haw just do not exist'. Our experience has been precisely similar in regard to Haw-Haw's references to Ireland.

Apart from listening-in ourselves, we are in a position, if need be, to obtain the gist, if not the actual texts of Haw-Haw's statements, from other sources.