Letter from Frederick H. Boland to Seán Murphy (Dublin)
(Copy)¹

The Minister spoke in the general debate in the Assembly on 30th November. He rose shortly after midday and spoke for about thirty-six minutes. No speech during the debate received anything like the reception accorded to the Minister’s. The volume of applause at its conclusion was really remarkable and delegates crowded round the Minister from all sides to congratulate him and express approval of his speech.

Among the first to congratulate the Minister was Senator Knowland, of the United States delegation. He was on the point of going to Washington and was so anxious that the speech should reach the State Department without delay that he took the Minister’s original copy with him. The other delegates who congratulated him warmly included Sr. Lequerica (Spain), Dr. Belaúnde (Peru),² General Jameli (Iraq); the delegates of Israel, Greece, Luxembourg, and a number of other countries were equally warm in their congratulations. What was, perhaps, more remarkable was that Mr. Andrew Cordier, senior official of the United Nations Secretariat after the Secretary General, came down off the tribune to compliment the Minister. We were told that this was unprecedented.

The Minister continued to receive enthusiastic felicitations during the day. Sir Pierson Dixon, the British representative, told him that he had missed hearing the speech but that, at a luncheon he had just attended, nothing else had been spoken about. He had since read the speech and described it as ‘a breath of fresh air’. Mr. Pink,³ of the British Foreign Office, subsequently told me, in confidence, that the British delegation’s daily report to the Foreign Office had described the Minister’s speech as the outstanding performance of the general debate in the Assembly. Another member of the British delegation, Mr. Crossthwaite, told me that, although there was much in the speech with which the British naturally could not agree, they considered it a magnificent performance. He added that he had heard Sr. Belaúnde, one of the most experienced delegates at the United Nations, describe the speech at a luncheon party as ‘inspired by the Holy Ghost’. Sr. Belaúnde himself is an outspoken Catholic. Sr. Oriundo, of Cuba, also spoke to me about the speech. He said that he considered it the best he had heard in the United Nations Assembly in ten years and that he had sent a telegram to the Minister in Dublin informing him to that effect.

The speech seems to have made an equally deep impression in the Press gallery. Mr. Long, of the ‘New York World Telegram’, who writes a weekly foreign affairs commentary for the Scripps-Howard syndicate, told me that, when he went to the Press Officer of the United States delegation on Saturday for suggestions as to what he might take as his ‘lead’ in his commentary next week, the Press Office told him that he might do worse than use the Minister’s speech as an illustration of how the essential issues of the present world situation were coming to be better recognised in United Nations circles.

Mr. Broadbent,⁴ the ‘Daily Mail’ correspondent, was also enthusiastic. He admired not only the tone and matter of the speech but its literary style.

We are still awaiting Press cuttings to see what impact the speech has had in the American newspapers. Mr. Broadbent commented on the amount of space given to it in the ‘New York Times’. As the Minister knows, Mr. Horowitz, of the ‘World Press Union’, intends to deal with the speech in his commentary next week.

We have only summary reports of the treatment of the speech in the Irish newspapers. I would gather from them, however, that they give an inadequate idea of the impression which the speech made. It is no exaggeration, I think, to say that it was the principal topic of conversation in the United Nations building for the rest of the day and it is still being widely discussed several days afterwards.

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The Assembly devoted the whole of today to a further discussion of the Hungarian situation. The debate will be resumed tomorrow when we expect to speak in support of a resolution introduced by the United States and a number of other delegations, including our own. We had arranged to co-sponsor this resolution before the Minister left and he brought a text of the draft resolution with him. The principal feature of this new resolution is that it sets a deadline – 7th December – for compliance by the Soviet Government and the Hungarian authorities with the resolutions previously passed by the Assembly. There is to be a discussion later this week between the sponsors of the resolution (including ourselves) as to what should be done if Hungary and the USSR have not come to heel by the date set.

The feeling against Hungary in the Assembly is strengthening.

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