Letter from Joseph P. Walshe to Michael McDunphy (Dublin)

I apologize for the delay in replying to your letter of 31st December.¹

With regard to your suggestion that I should record in writing the developments in the national life which came to my knowledge as Secretary of the Department of External Affairs, I am afraid I should have to ask to be relieved of such a task. The bare bones are known to everybody, and I think they should be left bare for some time to come.

To try and give any kind of coherent account of the period 1920-1930 would involve mentioning persons who – or whose friends – are still living. To praise one person frequently implies a comparison to the detriment of another. Moreover, I cannot believe that it would be a good precedent for a civil servant to tell the story of his own period, and his own experience, in the service. That kind of story, especially in a post like mine, would have repercussions which, cumulatively, could be quite detrimental to the interests of the State.

I wonder whether we are right to start writing history in this organized way. I am all in favour of letting things happen gradually where the writing of history is concerned. We are building up very slowly, but nevertheless surely, a small group of historians, and they will some day do their own research work, and write our history. Perhaps, a much longer perspective is necessary. What about letting things simmer for another forty or fifty years?

In the list of queries you enclosed with your letter of 6th January, there is not one in which I have the slightest competence, compared with, for example, yourself.

Many thanks for the copy of the Griffith letter (yours of 20th February).²

I suppose you would prefer I should return all the material you so kindly sent me.