Volume 6 1939~1941


Doc No.
Date
Subject

No. 361 NAI DFA Secretary's Files P2

Code telegram from Joseph P. Walshe to Robert Brennan (Washington)
(No. 196) (Personal) (Copy)

Dublin, 5 December 1940

Your 294.1 Same interviews being published in Socialist review 'Forward'.2 We have text. His argument easy for friends to refute. If Britain seizes our ports merely because useful to win war, she follows example of her enemies and destroys whole moral basis of her case. Ireland's only hope of survival is to fight against any country that invades her territory. Ports alone in modern conditions useless, seizure means reoccupation of whole territory. British planes would not gain more than ten or fifteen minutes by being based here instead of in Six Counties. Almost all sinkings by planes and submarines take place between one hundred and six hundred miles from north-west. We believe British agitation based on desire to find scapegoat, but composition of Cabinet makes situation uncertain and dangerous. Minister very pleased your splendid help.

1 Not printed.

2 In an article written for circulation by United Press, the writer and dramatist George Bernard Shaw urged Churchill to occupy the Irish ports.