NAI DFA Secretary's Files S20A Letter from Joseph P. Walshe to Timothy A. Smiddy (London)
(E.A. 231/3/148) (Copy)

With reference to your three letters of the 5th March¹ on the question of communications between our Government and the British Government, I am instructed by the Minister to make the following observations:

1. Copies of all despatches have been forwarded to your Office twenty-four hours after their transmission to the British Government. The occasions on which inconvenience has been caused by the twenty-four hours delay cannot have been numerous. Copies will be sent in future, as far as possible, by the same mail as the original.

2. The amount of semi-official correspondence of an important character passing between the departments of the two Governments is gradually lessening. It is hoped to have it entirely eliminated within a short time. The Minister is entirely opposed to the continuance of this correspondence and he does not wish to make arrangements which would seem to countenance it.

3. The major question raised in your letters of the 5th goes much further than suggestions for improving the machinery of communications. You will remember that prior to the 1st May 1927 all official communications passed through the Governor General.² That system provided the weak point in any argument destined to prove that the office of Governor General did not count as a depreciating factor in the status of the Dominions. When direct correspondence between the Minister for External Affairs and the Secretary for the Dominions was initiated the situation became totally changed, and the element of apparent subordination disappeared. Communication between Government and Government is more satisfactory than communication through an envoy. The latter system was not set up because of its efficiency and it survives only as a relic of the past. But apart from this general consideration the Minister does not wish at this stage to put the High Commissioner's Office in a position similar to that of a legation. The special relationship existing between the Members of the British Commonwealth of Nations will no doubt continue to be accompanied for some time by very considerable departures from general international practice, but so long as co-equality inter se is safeguarded this stage of things need not give any cause for anxiety. The post of High Commissioner is a special post of extreme importance, but its importance does not in any way depend on the degree of its assimilation to posts in non-Commonwealth countries. The position will therefore continue as heretofore. You will be asked to intervene when the need arises and you should accordingly keep in touch with the official correspondence. You will find yourself frequently in the position of having to say to the Dominions Minister or to officials when a new proposal is made by them that it would be better to put it in writing in an official despatch. The Minister does not consider it wise to allow the Government here to be bound by any forms or agreements except through an official despatch. In this connection you would be quite correct in stating that the King is simply advised by the Executive Council, but the Minister does not wish you to raise the question with Mr. Amery nor to allow Sir E[dward]. Harding to believe that you have regarded his document as anything more than an expression of his views.

4. Questions dealing with the actual practical value of the change you suggest would be more easily discussed during your next visit to Dublin.