Extract from a handwritten letter from Joseph P. Walshe
to Frank Aiken (Dublin)
(Personal)

I got the Secretary’s wire, telling me that you thought I should come home on leave notwithstanding my letter of the 7th.¹ You won’t mind if I put to you personally a few other arguments against my leaving the post, for some time to come.

[matter omitted]

No matter how little I can do for Ireland, or for general Catholic interests, in Rome, it is at least in our favour (in Vatican circles) that I should remain in or near my post so long as the danger remains threatening. Now, I have grown very tough with the years, have thoroughly acclimatized myself to the heat (it is now touching 90 degrees in this office) and I have never T.G. felt so strong in my life.

Another reason touches affairs nearer home. To put it vaguely – if I went home before the Red Hat,² and did happen to go and to see one A.B. rather than another, the brethren might, in their minds, accuse the Govt. of favouring that one A.B.

I’d really love to go home. Isolation becomes very painful in the end – but I am so convinced of the reality of my difficulties, I hope you will not insist.

Perhaps you would let me come up to Paris for a day or two when you are going to or returning from Strasbourg – to have a chat with yourself. Or wouldn’t it be splendid if you and Maudie came to Rome for two weeks’ holiday.

[matter omitted]