Letter from Joseph P. Walshe to Seán Nunan (Dublin)
(Secret) (20/118)

David Kelly¹ was in Rome recently, staying with some Austrian friends. I have known him now since his early days in Turkey, when he and his wife came to lunch on their journeys to and from London. I think his visit to Rome was in some way related to the publication of an Italian version of his book on Russia.²

He came to see me late on the eve of his departure, and there really was not much time for a satisfactory chat.

He is, obviously, taking a much greater interest in our affairs since he has become the proprietor of a house in Ireland, and a fairly frequent visitor to Dublin, because, after a short conversation on his own and his wife’s literary output, he changed the subject abruptly to ‘Partition’ and related issues.

Why, he asked, could we not join NATO. Our defence would then be absolutely secure. Nobody had the means of compelling the Northern minority to join the Republic! We ourselves, by abandoning Mr. de Valera’s original policy of ignoring the Belfast Government’s fulminations, had gradually built up an increased resistance capacity in the Protestant population, which now, at any rate, could not be ignored. And not even the American Government could advise any form of coercion owing to the vast complexity of religious and political passions which would be aroused in the United States itself.

I repeated what I am certain he has been told several times by our own Minister and by the other Ministers whom he meets, namely, that it was out of the question for Ireland to become a member of NATO because it would be a betrayal of the fundamental principle of the unity and integrity of our country. It was useless, I said, to try to force or persuade us to accept such a condition as the only means of being furnished with arms for our defence. America, as well as Britain, knew quite well that our people simply could not put themselves in the position of being a legal guarantor of the British occupation of part of our country.

When he insisted that America was not giving – and would certainly not give us – arms unless we joined NATO, I replied that I could not imagine the Americans being so lacking in horse sense. Why could they not give us arms for our defence? Arms, once received, would certainly be used for defence in case of need, and our defence was a vital interest of both Britain and America.

If he wanted to help, why did he not persuade the Americans to give up metaphysics, and to send us arms and the relevant supplies immediately. The straight forward, concrete arguments were all in favour of America dropping the NATO condition, and giving us arms unconditionally.

I told him I was not au courant with the details of the present situation, and I had really no right to express any but a personal view. But I made it clear that if Britain did not want to help to solve the political problem now, the alternative was to give the Government responsible for the 26 Counties the possibility of defending their territory. He always tried to imply that, of course, Britain could not give us arms, not having enough for more exposed areas at home and abroad. He was quite definite in saying that America refused to give us arms, and refused because we would not join NATO.

Naturally, I mentioned Mr. de Valera’s pledge not to allow Ireland to be made a jumping-off ground for an attack on Britain (a fortiori on America).

The whole impression I got from David Kelly’s conversation was that America and Britain are playing a common game, if it is not a case of America having frankly handed us over to the British as a reserved sphere. David Kelly, like most British Civil Servants, adopts the easy attitude, so common during the last war, of always making the Americans take the role of the nigger in the wood pile. This would be an easy enough attitude to defeat if we were sure that high American spheres really did think differently from the British in regard to our Country.

The American Government is repeating the irresponsible tactics of the late war. They never seem to have got beyond the surface of one of the gravest national problems in Europe, perhaps for them the gravest. I am afraid they are being slowly but surely converted to British ideas about many other important issues. The Egyptian Minister to the Holy See³ was with me to lunch, the other day, and he expressed the view that the Americans were less independent in Mediterranean affairs than they had been some months ago. He has a good deal to say in favour of Caffery,⁴ the American Ambassador in Cairo (a practising Catholic of Irish origin, as you probably know), who seems to be an upholder of Egypt’s rights and an opponent of colonialism.

In spite of the strange attitude of official America I am convinced that it is a vital interest for us to win their good will, and, by persuading them to establish the very practical relationship of rearming us efficiently, to secure our liberation from the British sphere of influence in which we have been placed by the extreme plausibility of the British and the unbelievable gullibility of the Americans.

Seven years in Rome, and very frequent contacts with American officials and Clergy, make still clearer to me the rightness of the Minister’s attitude that we cannot do too much to secure the good will of official spheres in the United States, and to explain to them our factual situation while never yielding on the question of principle.

Unfortunately, it is only too obvious that the bigger wigs in the Republican group are also the biggest snobs and the most susceptible to the British social influence, which is being used so cleverly against us, and not only in America.

Perhaps the Minister would allow you to send me a secret note on the present position in order to fill in my background.

Kelly was extremely positive about the NATO condition. Has it ever been quite so flatly formulated to us? Have we received any arms recently from America? I feel certain that the British have suggested to them that we might use our troops to attack the Six Counties if they were adequately armed.