Confidential report from Josephine McNeill to Seán Nunan (Dublin)
'Rejection of EDC'
(Copy)

I have the honour to inform you that in diplomatic circles here as elsewhere the political vacuum created by the rejection of EDC and the consequent visits of European capitals of Mr. Eden, Mr. Murphy¹ and especially the hurried and unconventional visit of Mr. Dulles are regarded as indicating a crisis of the first magnitude and a political situation of great danger. Talking the matter over with a few of my colleagues, they expressed the opinion that the political situation is now in a state of rapid flux in which policies acceptable quite recently will prove to be already out of date.

The cleavages between France, Western Germany, Britain and the USA severally and collectively are widening instead of contracting. France can hold up every policy of German rearmament so long as Mendès-France is in power and he can count on the 100 Communists vote to provide him with the necessary majority.

A substantial section of the British population is anti-German rearmament. In Germany Adenauer’s position is progressively weakening. That of his political opponents is growing stronger. Adenauer when his power was stronger could have persuaded the German people to accept limitations of their sovereignty. Now that position has been passed (in the view of my colleagues with whom I spoke). The French attitude has hardened German opinion, the British effort to substitute the Brussels Pact² as an alternative to EDC is too weak and too late a move to provide a powerful attraction for German political circles. The card of European integration has been played and lost. The question of German unification (which is at heart the fundamental question for every German) is likely to come sharply into the foreground. My colleagues believe that Soviet Russia will come in at a given moment with a high bid as regards German unification or at least with some positive step likely to bedevil further the relations of the Western powers already sufficiently embroiled. A cardinal point of Soviet doctrine is that ‘the falling out of the capitalist powers’ among themselves is a historic necessity inevitable in our time and that their quarrel will mark a key-point in the advance of Communism. The present political divergences in Europe (and notably in the Far East also) may well seem to Soviet Russia to confirm this view.

My Finnish colleague³ who was one of those with whom I spoke, thinks that we may expect a fairly quick reaction from Russia. The Russians are ‘very clever’ he said (and the representative of Finland should know that) and they will make the most of the present situation. ‘Things will happen very quickly’, he said.

Nothing but a full scale acceptance by Britain of the leadership of the continental powers and all the commitments military and otherwise involved in such acceptance can put the Humpty-Dumpty of European integration together again. But it must be quick. The sands are running out. Such is the trend of diplomatic opinion here.