Letter from John J. Hearne to Seán MacBride (Dublin)
(Secret) (Copy)

Dear Minister,
On Thursday and Friday last I despatched the reports of my interviews with Mr. Pearson and Mr. Reid on the subject of partition and the Atlantic Pact.¹ I am afraid the Secretary will think I have been slow in reporting, but I wanted to give the complete picture, and I did not see the final draft of Mr. Pearson's reply to your personal letter to him of the 7th February until Thursday.

I hope that you will not feel that I have mishandled this gravely important affair. I did my best, with the results which you will have before you by now in Mr. Pearson's letter of the 22nd February and my two reports. I regret my failure to bring the Canadian Government to the point of promising to take the initiative.

You have, however, lifted the question of partition on to the international plane in the concrete and crucial context of the Pact. That is the longest step forward we have yet taken. Mr. Pearson was definite that the question would be coming up at meetings of the representatives of the Pact countries: the United States Government would, he said, be reporting back on the basis of your Aide Mémoire.²

For that reason I feel that your personal correspondence with the Canadian Foreign Minister should not end with the recent exchange of letters. You may or may not desire to emphasise again the reasons why we could not go into the Pact as things are. You have made that abundantly clear already. But you may wish to express your appreciation of that part of Mr. Pearson's letter (not worded as I would have liked) in which he says that when the matter comes up our essential policy will be fully understood by the Canadian representatives. That, and anything further you might think it well to add, would be all to the good. For one thing, it would express your confidence in the sincerity of Mr. Pearson's attitude, and that might be very helpful should an opportunity for action, short of the initiative, be afforded him later on. You can, I feel, bring him further than he went in his letter if you think it well to do so at this stage.

The Canadian Government want us in the Pact. But the partition question is a most difficult issue for them to take up especially in an election year. Mr. Pearson particularly emphasised to me the danger to him politically if his letter to you was published and it became known that he was personally in favour of ending partition. The Canadian newspapers other than some French Canadian, and a few uninfluential Catholic weeklies, are heavily biased in favour of the maintenance of the border. The results of the recent Six Counties elections got far more publicity and favourable comment than our releases on Ireland and the Pact. The Irish vote is not a factor in Canadian elections. It is scattered and unorganised. The Irish in Canada are mostly British colonial in outlook. No candidate has anything to fear, even in the one or two constituencies where the Irish predominate, from not standing publicly for the unity of Ireland. On the contrary a candidate would have something to fear in any constituency and a great deal in most if he did stand publicly for the unity of Ireland.

Your approach to Mr. Pearson in a personal way was, therefore, the only possible course: for, whatever he may do in a private way, he will do nothing publicly. There is every hope that you personally can persuade him to go much further than he would, or, perhaps, could indicate in his letter. It is my duty to let you know that Mr. Pearson was so deeply impressed by his conversations with you, Sir, in Paris at the end of last year, that he has not ceased to speak of our Foreign Minister in terms of such respect and admiration as it would embarrass you to read and delight our people to hear. You changed his whole attitude of mind on Ireland and Irish problems. Forgive me for mentioning this. I do so because it seems to me to be a circumstance of great importance in connection with your discussions and negotiations on partition and the Pact.

I should like to refer to an occasion on which Mr. MacKenzie King intervened very effectively on behalf of Ireland during the war. In June, 1941, at the instance of Mr. de Valera, he opposed Mr. Churchill's policy of conscription in the Six Counties. You may not have had the time, or any occasion, to read the reports of the Mission on that subject. The references are No. 14/126 of the 4th June, 1941,³ and No. 14/127 of the 5th June, 1941.⁴ Mr. King's intervention was quite remarkable for that stage of the war, and, I have heard, decisive. The reports will interest you as showing the kind of action which Canadian statesmen may take on our behalf if they can do so without publicity. They will not openly side with us against the British if they can possibly avoid it. (As regards Mr. King's private intervention in 1941, it must be added that he was always against conscription in Canada for reasons you well know. That may have had a good deal to do with his attitude to conscription in the Six Counties. Anyway, he did successfully intervene).

You will see from the reports that Mr. King spoke to me at that time of Irish national unity. He was probing me on the question as to whether the Taoiseach's predecessor (and your own) would seek to bring Ireland into the war in return for the abolition of the border. What we are asking now is national unity as the only way to our participation in a Pact to prevent war. I think that the reasonableness of that position is not lost on Mr. King's successors in the Premiership and the Secretaryship of State for External Affairs. I am, therefore, respectfully submitting that you keep on keeping our position before Mr. Pearson. I am certain that more will come of your personal relations with him than may now seem likely. Close personal relations constitute our best possible diplomacy here in present circumstances, and will for years to come. Canadian political thinking on Ireland - Canada's great new place in the world notwithstanding - is basically British colonial. Outside a strongly nationalist group of French Canadians our neutrality in the war, our exit from the Commonwealth, and our attitude to the Pact, are deeply resented. Our own people in Canada are divided and indifferent, and mostly without standing or influence.

Our work here must, therefore, be patient and painstaking. Its instrument must be personal intimacy with the makers of Canadian policy. And its success will greatly depend on the personal pre-eminence, and persuasiveness (perhaps over long intervals), of our Ministers at home and abroad.