Memorandum from Joseph P. Walshe to Eamon de Valera (Dublin)

I went to lunch to David Gray's today. The Nuncio, Sir John and Lady Maffey, and the Lord Mayor¹ and Mrs. O'Sullivan were also there.

I was placed next to David Gray and it was inevitable that he should talk about the situation. He is clearly becoming more and more perturbed at the hornets' nest which he has stirred up. His main preoccupation is to prove that he was not responsible for the leakage.

I asked him if he had heard from Sir John Maffey about Madame Goor 's statement some days before the presentation of the Note.

He said he had not heard a word about it, as he had not spoken to Goor himself for a long time, and Madame Goor would be the last person he would confide in.

I said it seemed to me that he was under an obligation to let us know the name of Erin Brown's first informant.

He thought that would not be quite correct, but I said that, in a matter which he himself had regarded as so important, he was obliged to help us to discover the source of the leakage. Ultimately he agreed to think the matter over.

He asked me what I thought of the American Note.

I said quite frankly that there was a lot of the 'big bully' about the end of it, and Gray immediately said 'That is the part I had nothing to do with'. He had been sent the whole draft for his approval down to the absolute minimum paragraph, and he was astonished to find that paragraph added when he received the final Note for transmission.

He then talked about Marschner² and insinuated that what was said in our Note about him was not true because he was six weeks at large before we captured him.

I reminded him that the six weeks' freedom followed his escape from Mountjoy and that, as a matter of fact, he had been captured within a very few hours of his landing by parachute.

Gray then went on to enlarge on the possibility of there being many Mrs. Brughas in the country who would be ready to give shelter to German agents.³

I asked him why he always seemed to be able to turn mere possibilities into positive facts. Just because a thing was possible, it was enough to use against us. Was not that system of hypothesis a very bad and a very unjust basis on which to build up a case against us? A case could be made against any neutral country if their freedom was to be threatened because of what might happen or might have happened.

The leakage preoccupation came back again towards the end of lunch, and he said that there need never have been any feeling aroused but for the leakage and subsequent inevitable publication.

He also mentioned his letter to Mr. Boland. I said Mr. Boland had been good enough to let me see it, and I could not refrain from remarking that his interpretation of the step taken was astonishing. The Guards were naturally afraid that, at a time of tension like the present, some foolish people might say unpleasant things to him.

If any fellows in the country, he said, were unpleasant with him, he would just get out of his car, take them to a pub and argue the matter out with them. He thought that it would create a very bad impression in America if it were known that the American Minister in Dublin was being guarded. Finally, he said he would prefer to have only the two detectives around the house.

All this conversation was carried on in a low tone. The other guests, talking loudly amongst themselves, were not listening.

After lunch, the Lord Mayor told me that Mrs. Gray, next to whom he was sitting, was very worried indeed about the situation, and that he did his best to make her feel more worried. In fact, he said, he met quite a lot of fellows who would like to 'throw a few sods of turf' at David. He was not going to go to the Legation to lunch but, on second thoughts, he decided he might do more good by going.