Letter from Joseph P. Walshe to Robert Brennan (Washington DC)
(205/26A)

Dear Bob,
In your telegram of the 2nd April¹ on the decision taken at New York on 29th March to start a new anti-Partition movement, you said that it was imperative to send out a mission as an Information Bureau or otherwise.

The Taoiseach agrees that an Information Bureau of some kind is most desirable. But he fears that an official Government Bureau is not the best solution. Apart from the difficulties of finding here the right man to run such a Bureau and the necessary personnel, the information given by a Government Bureau might not carry the same weight as a bureau established and run by a voluntary organisation. Foreign Information Bureaux have become objects of suspicion in all countries, and their activities are regarded as purely propagandist and without other than an accidental relation to truth.

The Taoiseach wonders whether, in all the circumstances, it might not be better to depart from the idea of the Official Bureau altogether, and to ask the new voluntary organisation to establish an information centre at its own expense. After all, the dissemination of information about Ireland should be one of the normal and principal activities of such an organisation. Moreover, when you consider how easy it is for an organisation to start off with a meeting passing pious resolutions and without having an immediate practical programme of work with which to harness the active enthusiasm of its members, you will agree that an Information Centre should be a positive Godsend.

The question of expense, is, of course, important, but I think that an earnest American organisation would be prepared to meet that.

Would you talk to the new body in this sense?