Extract from a letter from John J. Hearne to Frederick H. Boland (Dublin)
(690/2)
'Canada's Palestine Policy'

[matter omitted]
On Saturday the 13th December we dined with Mr. Nemec, the Czechoslovakian Minister, and Mrs. Nemec. Mr. and Mrs. Ilsley¹ were the guests of honour. I had not met Mr. Ilsley since his return to Ottawa. I, therefore, took the opportunity of thanking him again for his speech at Lake Success on Ireland's candidature for membership of UNO. He told me that Mr. St. Laurent had written to him to New York to inform him of my call to the Department to express your appreciation of his remarks. He was deeply grateful. The Russian objection to Ireland's membership he described as 'ludicrous'. He began at once to speak of Palestine. He expressed grave doubts as to the future. He knew, he said, that the action of the Canadian Delegation had been criticised and would continue to be criticised and misunderstood. The point was, what were they to do? He had never thought of the partition solution, if it was a solution, on any higher basis than as, in all the circumstances, the least objectionable of the four alternative proposals put forward. He gave me the impression that he regarded the whole business as unsatisfactory, and his own part in it as irksome and unwelcome to him. All they could now do, he said, was to hope for the best.