Confidential report from John W. Dulanty to Frederick H. Boland (Dublin)
(Secret Report No. 34)¹

I had a talk this morning with Mr. Harold Macmillan, M.P.,² who, as you know, is one of the 'rising hopes' on the Conservative Front Bench. I handed him a copy of the Summary of a Statement by the Minister for the consideration of the Council of Ministers of the O.E.E.C., dated 30th June last,³ and also a copy of the address to the Rotary Liverpool Club on the 22nd September. When I had outlined, necessarily quickly, the Minister's statements he immediately agreed. He thought Britain's unilateral action was a great mistake and rumours were already arising of the possibility of a European Union without the British.

He thought devaluation was not a policy. It was an event, an effect of several causes, the immediate one being no doubt the serious diminution in the British reserves, and he had told the Opposition Shadow Cabinet he thought the Government had no choice but to do what they had done.

I got the impression that he thought Cripps had easily the finest brain in the Cabinet. Attlee, he thought, said to himself every morning - 'I have lasted a good deal longer than MacDonald.⁴ All the time my line must be the dead opposite to his. He retrenched. I won't. He formed a Coalition. I won't.'

The Debate would probably give more information than the country had at present but no one knew, pending the Debate, what precisely the Government would do.

He thought that there was something to be said for the European countries of Strasbourg - representing as they did 250 millions of people - taking the opportunity which devaluation gave them of forming the tariff bloc, and of even establishing a single currency.

He was afraid things would get worse before they got better. There might well be another crisis before long when even those least politically aware would be confronted with the stark reality and from which there would beno escape. The Social Services would have to be cut and then the Labour Government would go out, passing the problem on to the Conservatives.

Laughingly he told of a conversation he had with the Italian Ambassador,⁵ who was full of admiration for the acuteness of the British Foreign Secretary. 'Bevin is wonderful' - he said. 'He planned to ride two horses. If Strasbourg failed Washington would very likely win. I didn't think he was so clever'.

The truth is, Mr. Macmillan said, that the Foreign Office were running Strasbourg while the Treasury were cultivating Washington. It was the old story of no concerted action. A strong head of Government, such as Churchill, would have seen that these two powerful organisations were working on the same lines.

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Mr. Macmillan said that after the first rather trenchant talks about the Six-County problem the Irish delegation at Strasbourg fitted well in, and new and interesting alignments were made. He thought X⁶ who sat on the same Committee as he might have done better had he made less frequent interventions in the debate.

He said that Mr. de Valera had made an impressive figure on the Cultural Committee. One of the French delegates approached him and was full of praise for a contribution Mr. de Valera had made that day. Apparently, he had given an exposition of some aspect of the Cartesian philosophy, which the Frenchman described as an enthralling discourse which might have been delivered in a Spanish Monastery in the Seventeenth century!