Letter from Joseph P. Walshe to Seán Murphy (Paris)
(Secret)

Thanks very much for your report on your conversation with the Turkish Minister, which the Taoiseach has found very interesting.¹

Further reports of this character on the general European situation will be much appreciated.

2. Thanks very much for your report on the internal situation in France and on the reception of the re-broadcast of the Taoiseach's speech.²

We are doing everything possible to have the power of our station increased at an early date, and, furthermore, to establish a higher-powered short-wave station. The latter may take the best part of eighteen months to bring into operation.

3. The Taoiseach's speech has had a profound effect on our own people. It was a well-timed moral tonic after five years of bitter anti-Irish propaganda in the British Press and in the House of Commons (through pre-arranged questions). The speech has been universally praised here and has had very wide repercussions in Britain and America. The people were beginning to feel that the British especially were being let get away with too much, and a feeling of deep resentment was caused by the tone and matter of Churchill's speech. They saw in it a revival of the old Tory spirit of violent intolerance and contempt with regard to everything that concerns the rights and interests of this country. Coming so soon after the insult to the National Flag in Trinity College,³ it re-aroused in the people the old deep sense of British injustice and hypocrisy. One of its incidental consequences, according to reports from all over the country, has been to increase enormously the numbers of people attending Gaelic League classes.

4. In this connection, you will wish to hear that the Taoiseach is constantly enquiring about the zeal and interest of all the members of our missions abroad in relation to the language and history of the country. He has asked me to tell all our heads of mission how deeply he is convinced that a knowledge of the language and of the history of our country are vital for all of us in the foreign service, if only as an aid to the zeal and abnegation which shall be required of us in the work lying before us in the difficult times ahead. The Taoiseach fully realises how difficult our language is, especially for those members of the Department serving abroad, but he knows that, with the books now available, it is possible, even for people living entirely outside the country, to acquire a general knowledge of Irish and a sufficient acquaintance with it to be able to talk about its special character with the outside world. He knows that the fight in future will very largely centre around the maintenance of our national distinctiveness, and, in his view and in the view of the great majority of thinking Nationalists, the language constitutes the main basis of our claim to be treated as a separate nation and people.

5. You will be interested to hear that the British and the Americans, especially as represented at the two Legations here, expected a great explosion of pro-British sentiment in the Press and in the cinemas the moment the censorship was raised. They hoped especially that there would be universal attacks against the Government for the relatively strict character of their war censorship. Quite the contrary has happened, and the very lame attempts of the 'Irish Times' and the 'Irish Independent' to work up feeling have completely failed. Indeed, when the war films appeared in the cinemas, they provoked quite a lot of hostile demonstrations, not because of any anti-Allied feeling, but because the people felt that the propaganda produced was an insult to their intelligence. Hence you had in some cinemas cries of 'Up the Swastika' coming from Irishmen actually serving in the British Army simply because of their irritation and disillusionment at Churchill's attitude.