Extract from a letter from Francis T. Cremins to Frederick H. Boland (Dublin)
(203/26) (250/19)

Just as I have always thought that the sooner the weakness of the United Nations Organisation is recognised generally, the better for the Organisation, so I think it is no harm that questions like those of the admission of neutrals should be brought early to a head. States know then better where they stand. A neutral State's position is, in my view, stronger outside after an application to get in, than it would have been after refusal to apply for membership, on what was virtually an invitation from the three Great Powers at Potsdam. Moreover, if an Organisation adopts a Charter, under which a neutral State, which is qualified under its terms, can be so easily prevented from joining, and from thus voluntarily giving up its neutrality, there should be no ground, on the part of the members of the organisation, for complaint, if such a State retains her neutral status in an emergency. I am not sure that we have not, by our defeat, gained something both ways. Ireland has given irrefutable proof of her desire to co-operate, and at the same time she retains her right to remain outside conflicts for which she will have no responsibility. It is of course open to question whether any State will actually succeed in remaining outside the next world war - which is now gradually coming to be regarded as certain; for war must follow a vital clash in interests when the latter is accompanied by competition in armaments. But the same arguments in justification of aggression can hardly be employed against a State which had offered its collaboration and had been rejected. At the same time, the next war will be regarded more than ever as the final war-to-end-wars, and will be so complicated by surprises and fifth columns and sabotage, and the issues will be so profound, that it is questionable whether any State's neutrality will stand the shocks; although Ireland, from her geographical situation, might conceivably be in a more favourable position than she was in World War No. 2. I imagine that Ireland's chief danger during the period 1939/45, sprang from the submarine menace against Britain, and from the excuses for aggression which that menace provided, but it is questionable if the submarine menace will be anything so dangerous next time. The shipping position will of course always be acute in any war on a great scale, owing to the troop etc. transport necessities, but that is another matter.