Letter from Joseph P. Walshe to Ross Williamson¹ (Dublin)
(Personal)

My dear Ross Williamson,
I have received an invitation from Miss Holloway to attend the Ardiluan Lectures. She was good enough to enclose the programme. I must say I felt a bit horrified to see the subject selected. It is going to be very difficult for Mansergh, who has been so long in the Ministry of Information, to keep his talks on the purely objective historical plane. That is no insult to either his ability or his good intentions. Propaganda gets into people's blood during a war, especially in relation to a country like Germany, which has so ruthlessly occupied so many small countries, and I don't think that even the highest fliers in history can escape it.

Let us look at the situation in a realist way. Here is a series of four public lectures with Germany as the dominant note, given by a British Civil Servant working in the Ministry of Information. I can't agree that the choice of the lecturer and the subject taken as a combination was a good one. If Mansergh were to give a series of lectures on the evolution of the Commonwealth, or the relations between Britain and Canada, there would be no comment. Imagine the difficulties which could be created for the Government by different groups here who might want to get lecturers from London on, let us say, the religious aspects of Communism, or birth control in Soviet Russia, or similar equally edifying subjects. How could the Government oppose lectures of that kind, or even lectures given by our own citizens suppose they had a strong pro-German flavour, if a well-known institution like the Alexandra College in making its choice completely ignores the exigencies and circumstances of the times. Don't think I am blaming you for Miss Holloway's lack of consideration of our obvious difficulties. Quite the contrary, I am coming to ask you to help by writing to Mansergh and suggesting to him that we should be grateful if he would carefully consider the difficulties which we shall have to face if his lectures are of such a character as to encourage other people to create grave embarrassment for us and possibly, also, for his own authorities. He could discuss the whole policy of the raison d'etre of 'the balance of power ' making Germany just a factor in its evolution.

I am sure you won't mind if I suggest that any proposals made to you in future for political lectures or talks on any subject, before any audience, should be discussed between us in friendly fashion before you pass them on to London. Some members of a certain group here have boasted that they could get into touch, through the Foreign Office or the Ministry of Information, with members of foreign Governments in order to invite them to give political lectures, and that they were thus able to ignore their own Government. They are even said to have boasted that they could get letters through the British bag in relation to such invitations.

I told Sir John the other day that I should like to have a good chat with you, because I believe that, without bothering about other people, you and I can together eliminate quite a lot of causes of misunderstanding and suspicion and can prepare the way for real collaboration in the vastly bigger things which are going to determine not only the relations between our two countries, but the future of our common Christian civilisation.