Memorandum by Joseph P. Walshe 'New Italian Chargé d'Affaires'

Baron Confalonieri came to see me today.¹ It was his first visit as a functioning Chargé d’Affaires.

He told me that he came to Dublin with instructions to take over from Berardis immediately. He felt, however, on reaching here that it would have been too hard on Berardis and his wife if he carried out his instructions to the letter. He had not much hope that Berardis would get a post immediately. The best he expected was that he would be placed on disponibilité on a moderate salary. Berardis would never have got the post here, he said, had it not been for the intervention of Signora Berardis’s brother-in-law, Count Volpi,² and there is considerable doubt that he will ever again be sent to a post abroad. The fact that he had not learned Russian during his stay of six years in Moscow, and that he left Dublin after a similar period without a knowledge of English, would militate strongly against him. The reports from the Dublin Italians and from the staff of the Legation all agreed on the point of his unfitness for the post of head of mission. If his Government were indulgent with Berardis, it would be due exclusively to the Taoiseach’s kind letter and to the representations made by our Minister in Rome on instructions from the Department.

I thought it better to put the Chargé d’Affaires completely au courant with our difficulties with what was wrongly known as the Italian ‘colony’. I told him that we did not like the idea of colonies. The Italians in Dublin were, for the most part, engaged in some form of permanent business enterprise which allowed us to assume that they had no intention of returning to Italy and that they wished to be treated as Irish citizens (whether or not they had fulfilled all the precise conditions required for citizenship). Until the rise of the Fascist movement, these people were rapidly becoming Irish and were treated and respected as loyal citizens of this country. Unfortunately, we had allowed former Italian representatives to form a political Fascist group in Dublin, and since then our trouble went on increasing until several of his countrymen in Dublin became a serious embarrassment to the State.

I emphasised the desire of the Government that the Italian representatives should henceforth make it their aim to avoid the formation of any Italian political organisation here. On the contrary, they should make every effort to convince the trouble-makers that their first loyalty was to the country of their adoption and that they should behave as normal Irish citizens. A small country like Ireland could not afford the luxury of the presence of foreign political groups the result of whose activities, whether they wished it or not, would be to imperil us with our neighbour.

The Chargé d’Affaires agreed wholeheartedly with what I had said. Indeed, he declared that his instructions were extremely strong on this particular point. He promised to give every help in undoing the bad work of his predecessors.

I urged the Chargé d’Affaires to continue the good relations which Berardis had maintained with the clergy and the religious orders. They were an extremely important element in our relations with Italy and he could feel quite sure that they would give him full support in his work of increasing the esteem and affection in which his country was held in Ireland.