Letter from John J. Hearne to John A. Costello (Dublin)

My dear Taoiseach,
Mr. Mackenzie King had me come to him last evening to talk over your visit.

He began the conversation by expressing again the happiness it would give him to have you as the guest of the Canadian Government. He said that he knew that I had taken care to assure you of the 'warmest of welcomes' from himself, his colleagues and the Canadian people, and that Mr. St. Laurent had conveyed to him your message of gratitude for his invitation to be the guest of the Canadian Government in Ottawa at the end of your engagements as the guest of the Bar Association in Montreal. He emphasised his sense of the honour and compliment your visit would pay to Canada and his keen personal pleasure 'for many reasons' that you were coming. 'We are old friends' he added.

The Prime Minister asked me to run over the arrangements. When I had done so, he asked me whether there was anything in the programmes for the Cities other than Ottawa in respect of which I considered his personal intervention would be helpful. I said that, so far, everything was working out smoothly, and that I did not think it would be necessary to bother him.

We spoke of the Ottawa programme. He wanted to fix it finally so that he could make arrangements prior to his going on holiday on Saturday next. He is going to the United States to rest for two weeks. He is returning to Ottawa then so as to be here before your arrival. (You will arrive here on the 4th September, the day you dine with H.E. the Governor General). Mr. King thought it right that you should, as arranged, dine with the Governor General first and then with him. We spoke for awhile about his dinner party and those who would attend it. Then about yours, and so on.

The Prime Minister was delighted that we had purchased the new official residence on Daly Avenue which he knows very well. He said it had always appeared to him to be a house most suitable for legation purposes and he was glad that it was now the property of the Irish Government. He was particularly pleased to know that it would be ready for your visit. I told him that Mrs. Costello and you would be the first to reside there as our family would not move in until after your departure. He heartily approved this arrangement (blinking one eye like President O'Ceallaigh and saying 'That's the way to do it'.)

We spoke of your career. He wanted me to tell him all about you and Mrs. Costello, the members of the family, and so on. He recalled, of course, that you were Attorney General in Mr. Cosgrave's Government in 1926 and asked very particularly about Mr. Cosgrave, his health, and so on. He remembered the Irish Delegation's part in the framing of the Statute of Westminster. We spoke of you and the Minister for Finance and Kevin O'Higgins and Desmond FitzGerald and Ernest Lapointe and Oscar Skelton.

I gave Mr. King an account of the political situation at home, the composition of the Inter-Party Government, its policies, and its achievements during the past few months. I made a comparison between your election as Prime Minister by Dáil Éireann and the choice of Mr. St. Laurent as Liberal leader by the National Liberal Convention last week. I said that in each case the one who least sought the leadership was called upon to assume it. In both cases the choice was a personal tribute, which neither recipient regarded as a personal triumph nor accepted save as a heavy responsibility imposed by a call of patriotic duty.

The Prime Minister was greatly taken by the comparison and spoke for a few moments about the joy it had given him to hand back the leadership of the Liberal Party to a French Canadian of the stature of Wilfrid Laurier. He said that he himself did not want to give up the leadership, but that he was now 73 and the years were beginning to tell. He tired, he said, easily, and felt that he could no longer pull his weight in the boat. He trembled to think of the burden he had laid on the shoulders of his successor. 'He is 64' he said, and added, 'How old is Mr. Costello?' I said '56'. 'A comparatively young Prime Minister', he replied, 'I carried the worst of World War II at St. Laurent's age.'

I told Mr. King that I had sent you the text of his valedictory address to the Liberal Party. I said that in all my reports to the Department I had presented him as the statesman of Canadian national unity. Notwithstanding the acute difference between the French speaking and the English speaking peoples of Canada the country had stood united in the face of mortal dangers and the two races had together fought and won two World Wars in our time.

Mr. King said that his whole life had been bound up with, and devoted to the solution of, the problem of Canadian national unity. He thanked me for my appreciation of it in my study of events and developments here in the past few years.

We spoke, at my instance, of your address to the Bar Association, and your other public speeches in Canada. I said that your address in Montreal would be of a professional character to your legal brethren of the Canadian Bar. I added that I had asked Hugh Keenleyside¹ who is now in Europe to go to Dublin and to call on you so that you might discuss with him such subjects as you might have in mind for your address to the Canadian Club of Ottawa. I told Mr. King that I myself would like you to speak in the Canadian Capital generally on Irish-Canadian friendship. The Prime Minister said: 'Yes, yes, friendship is the key-note'.

This conversation was, as you observe, intimate and informal. Mr. King was relaxed after a gruelling day including a long Cabinet and a succession of callers. His reception of me was never more gracious or kindly. Much more was said which can await your coming because it is not relevant to the main purpose of this letter which is to report the sense of my conversation of yesterday with the Prime Minister of Canada so that you may gather from it something of the atmosphere of goodwill and friendship with which you will be surrounded when you come to us at the end of this month.

You will be aware from my reports to the Department that it was the intervention of Prime Minister King which finally determined Mr. Churchill to abandon the policy of conscription in the Six Counties at the beginning of the War. You will also be aware of his most helpful attitude to us in February 1944 when Mr. Roosevelt without consulting the Canadian Government sent us his Note on the subject of the Axis Missions in Dublin. These matters you might mention in your private talks with Mr. King and express again the gratitude of our people.

I purposely adverted in the course of our conversation to his place in Canadian history as the statesman of national unity, as I felt that the problem of Partition was the one you would most desire to discuss with him privately.