Letter from Patrick McGilligan to L.S. Amery (London)
(E.A. 247/1929) (Copy)

Dear Mr. Amery,

I have your letter of the 23rd January. We also are most anxious to complete the ratification of the Treaty for the Renunciation of War without delay, but as the two Houses of the Oireachtas do not meet until the 20th February, we cannot proceed to ratify until the 21st. The motion is down as the first item on the Agenda of both houses for the 20th. We have made it a rule not to ratify any international agreement - except agreements of a purely administrative character such as the Automobile Convention - without the assent of the Oireachtas.

We consider that the common desire of all the States Members of the Commonwealth to promote the interests of peace through the Kellogg Pact would be more impressively and more forcibly expressed through separate instruments of ratification. A single instrument, to our mind, could not convey with equal force the spontaneity and wholeheartedness with which the individual Members of the Commonwealth have accepted the Pact. We propose to prepare immediately the instrument of ratification for signature by His Majesty and we hope that it can be signed within a few hours of its acceptance by the Dáil. In order to avoid delay, I shall ask you to be good enough to have the document forwarded to our Chargé d'Affaires at Washington immediately it has been signed by His Majesty. Meanwhile, I intent to instruct our Chargé d'Affaires to hand the instrument to the State Department the moment he receives it.

If His Majesty's Governments in Great Britain and Canada wish to wait so long before presenting their instruments we have no objection to the proposal that the three Representatives should act together. It would, however, seem rather unreasonable to impose such a delay on the other Governments of His Majesty and I hardly think that the ratifications will lose any of their force or be less acceptable to the United States Government by not being handed in simultaneously. We have already informed the United States Government of the position here with regard to ratification. It would be somewhat difficult to explain to the American Government why a similar delay should take place in Great Britain or the other countries of the British Commonwealth not governed by similar circumstances.

Many thanks for your kind inquiries about my cold. Fortunately it is much better. I trust that your recent holiday has fortified you against the prevailing epidemic of colds.