The Prime Minister accompanied by Sir John Anderson, Mr. Thomas Jones and Mr. C.P. Duff, met the representatives of the Free State alone at 12.30. He stated that he would report to them what happened after they had left the previous evening and would then propose to call in Sir James Craig. Between them and Sir James Craig they comprised all Ireland and they must therefore discuss together the situation that confronted them. There were two possibilities; either to maintain the boundary as it is or, if they could reach no agreement on that, then the boundary as it would be by putting the Award into force. Many of the things that Mr. O'Higgins had said yesterday he would do well to state direct to Sir James Craig. After they had left last night the Secretary of the Boundary Commission had brought to the Prime Minister a letter from the Chairman of the Boundary Commission, a Resolution of the Commission, maps showing the line given by the Award and a chapter from the Commission's Report showing the basis on which their Award had been framed. Had the Irish Representatives received these documents? Mr. O'Higgins said, 'No'. Had Mr. Bourdillon called on them last night bringing the documents? Mr. O'Higgins said, 'Yes'. The Prime Minister continuing, observed that the line in the Award is not the same as that given in the Morning Post map. To anyone maintaining the view that alterations of the boundary should only take place in one direction the Award might not be satisfactory: but if there is to be any give and take the Free State under the Award have the best of it. If the discussion was to be of practical value, it would be much better to base it on the real Award and not on the Morning Post's representation: and he had the figures here and the other relevant documents.

Mr. O'Higgins replied that trifling inaccuracies in the Morning Post's indication of the Award did not affect them. An Award leaving Newry and its economic hinterland within Northern jurisdiction could not be an award based on the evidence before the Commission. Newry is the acid test of the Commissioners'desire to act on their Terms of Reference undeterred by considerations outside those terms.

The Prime Minister enquired whether Mr. O'Higgins would still prefer not to know exactly what the terms of the proposed Award are? Did he think it better for the Award to be published and become law without his having seen it?

Mr. O'Higgins replied that they had had a message from Mr. Bourdillon saying that he was sending a courier to Dublin as he had not been given an opportunity to deliver the papers personally. Their position was that Professor McNeill had come away seeing no likelihood of the Report being in accordance with the Terms of Reference or the evidence. In those circumstances the less contact they had with the Commission the better.

The Prime Minister said, 'Shall I give you the figures of the area and population transferred in either direction before we talk?' Mr. O'Higgins replied that he knew the figures presented a contrast and that more population came to them than to Northern Ireland. He did not object to the exact figures being stated here but their position fundamentally was this, that they regarded the Commission as influenced by the truculent utterances of Northern Ministers and the tyranny of the special constables;and that in their Award they had followed, not the wishes of the inhabitants,but the line of what seemed, at the time, the least resistance.

The Prime Minister said 'Would you like the figures?' to which Mr. O'Higgins replied, 'I have no objection to your stating them'.

The Prime Minister then read the following:-

Summary of transfers to Irish Free State.
183,290 acres, 31,319 persons, of whom 27,843 are Roman Catholics and 3,476 of other Denominations.

Summary of transfers to Northern Ireland.
49,242 acres, 7,594 persons of whom 2,764 are Roman Catholics and 4,830 of other Denominations.

The gains of the Free State under the Award exceed those of Northern Ireland by 134,048 acres and 23,725 persons.

Mr. Jones added that the boundary was also shortened by 51 miles.At this point it was decided to invite Sir James Craig to come in. While waiting for him, the Prime Minister observed that English opinion, at any rate,would be disposed to regard the Award as fair.

Mr. O'Higgins replied that an irrelevant factor had influenced the Commission in as much as the starting off point of their Award was the preservation of the political entity of Northern Ireland as given form to in the 1920 Act. This was a political factor which should have been outside the consideration of the Commission. When the Treaty was being made the price which Northern Ireland knew she was to pay for contracting out was a substantial alteration of her position. The North knew that a Commission was to be set up for the express purpose of determining how much of Northern Ireland was to be allowed to remain outside the Free State.

At this point Sir James Craig entered.

The Prime Minister explained to Sir James Craig that the Irish representatives had not seen the actual figures or any of the Commission's documents but had just heard from him a summary of the figures. On Sir James Craig replying that he also had heard nothing, the Prime Minister read the summary set out on a previous page. He added that what they had to consider was how to get through the present situation without damage to Ireland as a whole. What would be the effect if the issue of the Award were avoided and the Free State Government found themselves able to recommend that the existing boundary should be stabilised? Mr. O'Higgins had yesterday given his view of the difficulties of that course and it would be best for him to put that view to Sir James Craig and indicate what he thought Northern Ireland could do to minimise those difficulties.

Mr. O'Higgins replied that some of what he had to say must be distasteful to his hearers, to which Sir James Craig answered that if their discussions were to be of any value all the cards must be on the table, and each must say exactly what was in his mind.

Mr. O'Higgins stated that Sir James Craig was familiar with the Free State conception of Article 12. Michael Collins had told him long ago and Sir James Craig was surprised on hearing it then. The difference at that interview had lasted ever since in full force. It was always understood by the Irish Signatories of the Treaty that the Northern Government were faced with the alternatives provided by Article 14 or by Article 12. When the course provided by Article 14 was abandoned and Article 12 became operative by the presentation of an Address to His Majesty for the North of Ireland to be excluded from the Free State the North acted with their eyes open and realised that a Commission would be set up, whose duties it would be to determine how much of the country known as Northern Ireland under the 1920 Act would remain a political entity. This conception of the Commission had remained in the Free State since 1920 and they had been confirmed in their view by the utterances of British Signatories, notably that of Lord Birkenhead on the 7th December, the day after the Treaty, and Mr. Lloyd George on the 14th December in the House of Commons. They understood then from what he said that Lord Birkenhead had in mind that, by the agency of the Commission, either Tyrone was going to the Free State or such a portion of it going that what was left would be predominantly non-Nationalist. Mr. Lloyd George's words 'If Ulster is to remain a separate unit, only by coercion can Tyrone and Fermanagh remain there' show that he obviously at the time thought Tyrone and Fermanagh could not remain part and parcel of political Ulster.

Sir James Craig had always objected to the Commission touching anything arranged by the 1920 Act: and they understood his point of view. The Free State had never shared the view which had emerged in England under Parliamentary pressure, as he regarded it, that this Boundary was a small and innocent thing, just a dinge here and a bulge there along the existing line. It might be said that when utterances were made in the British House of Commons which clashed with the Free State view of the Treaty, the Free State should have protested officially: but at the time they were in the middle of a Civil War.The Free State had always regarded the Commission as set up for no other purpose but to see how much of Northern Ireland was entitled to be excluded from the rest of Ireland. Sir James Craig's attitude had always been consistent. He had refused to nominate a member to the Commission and the Free State were entitled to say that unless the Commission were set up the Treaty was broken. After meetings with the British Government of the day[,] a Bill was passed setting up the Commission and the British Government took on the duty of nominating a commissioner for Northern Ireland. Although the Commission was for the purpose of ascertaining the wishes of the people the Free State raised no objection against the action of the Commission in not taking a plebiscite. They realised that legislation might be necessary to give the Commission the requisite powers and this would have caused delay: but, in addition, the resolution passed by the House of Lords, which was a flagrant and deliberate attempt to influence the Commission in its findings, they regarded as indicating that any further Bill for the purpose of holding a plebiscite would on that analogy be resisted. The Free State agreed with the Chairman of the Commission in taking the 1911 census as providing a fair basis for their deliberations and in regarding 95% or 97% of nationalists as wanting to go into the Free State and 95% or 97% non-nationalists as wanting to go to Northern Ireland. This was a rough and ready method but the Free State agreed it. The Commission moved on and whatever mutual confidences were given among the commissioners were observed by Dr. MacNeill. But the Morning Post article appeared: a flow of deputations poured into Dublin and an agitation broke out which led to Professor MacNeill's withdrawal. An award approximating to the Morning Post account was obviously going to lead to no harmony: so MacNeill felt that he ought to go, albeit that he had previously felt that the Award ought to be presented over the signatures of all the members without prejudice to their disagreement on the details. Professor MacNeill's attitude of giving agreement in the abstract and yet fighting his colleagues sector by sector was incomprehensible to his colleagues on the Executive Council: but finally when the Press exposure came and it was clear that the motive for his original undertaking no longer existed he retracted his engagement and handed in his resignation on the grounds that there was no likelihood of the Award being in accordance either with the Terms of the Commission's Reference or with the evidence before them.

The Award is practically ready and there is no one of any class or political creed in the Free State who could get up and defend it. It is not a fulfilment of the Treaty. The Free State Government are faced with a serious position: they do not mean to fly in the face of the legal position which they realise the Award would create, and they would have to do the administrative acts that would result from their formal acceptance. But in their public utterances they would have to say that the Treaty was not fulfilled. If they could hope to keep the controversy away from conflict on the physical plane and direct action they would have to direct the minds of their constituents to some other course: possibly the Free State's membership of the League of Nations might provide a resource. The Free State Government would have to say that, while givingformal assent to the legal position created by the Award, they believed that the Commission had been terrorised by the consideration of the armed forces of special constables backed up by a Government ready to resist and with the moral support given by the House of Lords Resolution.

The President had come home a few days before with the proposal that the existing boundary should stand, and that Sir James Craig would release a few prisoners who had already served four years of their ten years imprisonment. On such proposals the Free State Government would fall at once; they would not live a day: and any Unionist with political sense would confirm that view. The position in the Free State is too fluid for the Government to regard the prospect of their defeat without apprehension. This is on no personal grounds, but simply because there is no Party ready to carry on the State as based on the Treaty. The present Free State Government would be defeated on the question of British goodwill: in the face of the award no one could carry on against the anti-Treaty elements who would have derived new support from the trend of events. The President now shares this view: and no member of the Executive Council considers that they could face the Dáil or keep a majority even in their own party. He had been asked yesterday if he had any suggestions: he could say that if the award were delivered a legal position would be created and that would be better than confronting their people with the existing boundary merely set off with the addition of a few prisoners. If the Free State Government could point to some substantial improvement in the lot of the minority in Sir James Craig's area - a radical improvement and emancipation - they might survive when recommending the status quo to their people. The disabilities of the minority are these: they live at the mercy of the special police: Tyrone and Fermanagh are coerced: 45,000 'specials' in a six counties state shows that only coercion keeps the national majority of Tyrone and Fermanagh there. The present system of representation would have to be abolished and the conditions in the constituencies of the North East which deprive nationalists of their due representation must be changed. The position of Catholics in the North is not equal to that of Catholics elsewhere: if the Free State Government could say that the Catholics' lot would be improved and they would cease to be 'hewers of wood and drawers of water' then they might survive. Without all the alleviations he had indicated the nationalists of the North East who expected relief from the Commission would raise an outcry which would find an echo in every nationalist breast in the twenty six counties. The country would vote against the Government in a negative sense, without, that is, giving an explicit mandate for a republic: but with this new impetus against them no new Government could withstand the anti-Treaty elements.

SIR JAMES CRAIG said that Mr. O'Higgins had very accurately traversed the ground as regards the historical part of his review. The only comment he had to make on that part of the review was to exonerate himself and his colleagues from the charge of ever having done anything else but emphasise to the Free State that they were living in a fool's paradise as to what the outcome of the Commission would be.

MR. O'HIGGINS replied that Sir James had boycotted the Commission and they accordingly were confirmed in their view that the findings of the Commission could only advantage the South.

SIR JAMES CRAIG observed that he had stated to Michael Collins 'Supposing the findings of the Commission are of an in-and-out character, will you not be worse off in the end?' Collins had taken that view and had considered it better in the circumstances to substitute the method of a round table conference between Sir James Craig and himself. After Collins returned to Dublin, however, Sir James visited him there and this arrangement broke down: but at that time and later Sir James kept on asking what the position would be in regard to the transfer of areas from the South of Ireland to the North. The only reply he could get from the Free State was that they held other views and would not discuss such a contingency. He had told Ramsay MacDonald at the time of the setting up of the Commission that great harm was being done in the South by the people there being brought up to believe that they would get great advantages from the Commission.

At this point the Prime Minister observed that as it was now lunch time it would be well for Sir James Craig to resume his observations after the adjournment.