Memorandum by Frank Aiken of a meeting with Cloyce K. Huston (Dublin)

Mr. Cloyce K. Huston,¹ American Chargé d’Affaires, called to see me today with a record of his conversation with Mr. Lemass regarding the compulsory stop at Shannon and the right of trans-Atlantic planes to land at Dublin.

He went on to recall what I had said to him about my conference with Mr. Douglas MacArthur in Paris about the purchase of arms. He said that he had been thinking the matter over and that he wanted to tell me unofficially and without having consulted anyone, and merely from his experience in Washington in dealing with arms procuration problems, that it seemed to him there were only three ways in which arms could be obtained from America. One was a bilateral arrangement; second, adherence to a defensive group such as NATO; and the third was direct purchase. He said that in thinking the matter over and in view of the decision here not to adhere to the North Atlantic Pact because of Partition, he thought that some formula could be worked out to have Partition put [to] one side or outside the scope of the Pact, so that it would not affect our adherence. I replied by saying that on the assumption that nothing would be done about Partition we had decided to make every possible preparation to prevent our country becoming a vacuum; that we had purchased machine guns in Sweden² and anti-tank weapons in Belgium³ and had increased the pay of the Army.

I urged him that if the opportunity came his way informally to back the request I had made for the right to purchase some modern arms and also for the tools and jigs to make small machine-guns and anti-tank weapons. I went over with him the points regarding the importance of having our Army trained and equipped; the policy of not allowing our country to be used as a base of attack against England; the certainty that the vast majority of our people would favour non-participation in the war while very small groups would want to get us involved, one on the side of the British and the other against. I went over the grounds of my fears of airborne landings in the last war and their possibility in the next. I told him of our efforts to get the British to recognise that it was a British interest to settle Partition and of the possibility of bringing it to an end if they declared themselves publicly on the matter. I put forward the solution of a subordinate parliament, the transfer of powers and members to Dublin and the buying out of dissidents.

Mr. Huston was extremely careful in his opening remarks, but I felt he was sounding me on the possibility of some redefinition of the NATO aims which would meet the criticism made by the previous Government that in adhering to NATO we were confirming British retention of the Six Counties. I ignored this suggestion and concentrated on the possibility of bringing Partition to an end if the British were reasonable and recognised their real interests in the matter. I stressed Morrison’s indirect reaffirmation of Lloyd George’s letter to Carson ‘that whether the Six Counties wanted to end Partition or not they would not allow them to join the rest of Ireland’.

The conversation lasted about three-quarters of an hour.