Letter from Frederick H. Boland to William P. Fay (Brussels)

I am directed by the Minister to refer to your confidential report of the 20th March¹ regarding the conversation you had with the British Ambassador, Sir George Rendel, about the pact recently signed between Britain, France and the three Benelux countries. It is of considerable importance that, whenever the question is raised of our participation in any political grouping of the kind provided for in the recent pact, the problem of partition should be adduced at once as a fatal obstacle in the way of any such development. To fail to do this is to leave foreigners under a completely false idea as to the character of our outlook on the international situation and as to the nature of the principal factor influencing Irish public opinion in its approach to any form of political combination of the kind recently decided upon at Brussels.

The importance of the instruction conveyed in the foregoing paragraph cannot be too strongly emphasised. It is on our foreign representatives that we must rely to build up understanding abroad of our attitude on international problems, and any discussion of our international attitude which fails to take account of the difficulties created by partition can only be highly misleading to foreigners.

As to the tone and manner in which the partition problem should be put forward on such occasions, the attached reply by the Minister to a Parliamentary Question last month² may be taken as a guide. Although it relates to the question of economic co-operation between countries of Western Europe, the references in it to partition apply with even greater force to any suggestion of our participation in combinations of a political character.