Extracts from a letter from Joseph D. Brennan to
Conor Cruise O'Brien (Dublin)
(Personal)

You will have seen my telegram of yesterday in regard to the passage of the Fogarty Resolution through the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Now comes the next hurdle – the Rules Committee. We have got to go to work on these people, some of whom are strangers, in the same way as we worked on the Foreign Affairs Committee. Need I remind you again that one simply cannot do this without creating an opportunity for meeting these people and that opportunity can only be created by extending hospitality in some form or other. I have wearied you, I know, by telling you time and time again that I have not the means to do this any more and it has to be done if any results are to be obtained. I was fortunate in that I knew the members of the Foreign Affairs Committee – or some of them – pretty well and could meet them casually and cheaply, but that is not the case with the Rules Committee. Mr. MacBride promised me that he would arrange an entertainment allowance for me and I had a letter from Wilfie Lennon¹ in which he said that the matter was being taken up with the Dept. of Finance. That was a couple of months ago but there have been no results so far. Do you think that you could talk to Lennon, to O’Driscoll² and to the Secretary in regard to it and have it pushed through? I wish you would because if our people are really serious about this they ought to be prepared to spend a few dollars on it.

For example, I would like to give a little reception in September when the House goes back in full session. It is becoming inactive as soon as this Foreign Aid Bill gets through and will be inactive for about a month. I would like to give a party when all the members return to town and so get to work on the Rules Committee, but that will cost, my dear Conor, approximately $300.00 or better which I have not got. Do you think you could arrange, at any rate, the sanction for that for me? In your passion for economy over there, which of course is very praiseworthy, you can sometimes overlook the fact that the expenditure of a little money at the right time may avoid the expenditure of a great deal of money later on.

[matter omitted]

As regards the vote in the Foreign Affairs Committee, it is true that we got the Resolution through but I do not want you to have any blissful illusions about it. The opposition was quite firm in believing that such a Resolution was none of the business of the Foreign Affairs Committee. Those who voted in favour of it were not necessarily ardently so. There was a good deal of personal friendship weighed in the balance in the vote-casting and also just a little touch of blackmail. You see, the Committee feared that if the Resolution did not come out Fogarty³ would propose an amendment to the Foreign Aid Bill which might be carried in the House and might stick. He has been disarmed by the passing of the Resolution which was really all he desired but, as I said before, that does not mean that all those who voted for the Resolution are ardent advocates of the cause of Anti-Partition.

Do please write to me and give me any information you feel able to give in regard to developments in the Department and also most particularly in regard to this question of money.