740.0011 European War 1939/7148
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Under Secretary of State (Welles)
The Irish Minister called to see me at his request. He stated that he had been advised by his Government of a recent conversation which Mr. Gray had had with Prime Minister de Valera by instruction of the Department. In this conversation Mr. Gray was alleged to have said to the Prime Minister that in the last conversation which the Minister and I had had, I had indicated to the Minister that the United States was going to get into the war in the near future and that in such event the naval bases in Eire which the British desire to use would have to be made available to the United States anyway and that, consequently, there was no reason why the Irish Government should not make these bases available at once to the British. The Minister said that to the best of his recollection no references of this character had been made in our conversation and he was consequently at a loss to know on what grounds Mr. Gray’s conversation is based.
I replied that the Minister was entirely accurate in his recollection and that no such remarks had been made by me, directly or indirectly, nor, for that matter, did such remarks represent the policy of this Government. I stated that I felt sure there was some misunderstanding which could readily be clarified.
I stated that I could merely reiterate in general terms what I had said in my previous conversations, namely, that as the Irish Minister had admitted to me, naval and air bases in Eire would be of the greatest assistance and value to the British in their struggle for self defense and that, in as much as it was the announced policy of this Government to give all possible support and assistance to the British, this Government could not fail to view with sympathy any steps which the Government of Eire might take to assist the British in their struggle. At the present time, I stated, it was, of course, clear that the German submarines and raiders were concentrating on the North Atlantic approach to the British Isles and that so long as the British [Page 174] were deprived of the facilities which they could enjoy in Ireland, they were to that extent handicapped in their resistance against the attacks made upon their convoys. I told the Minister that the President had asked me to let him know that he desired to speak with him immediately after his return to Washington and I felt that this was a matter which the President would wish to discuss in some detail with the Minister. The Minister repeated to me the arguments he had advanced in all previous conversations, namely, that Eire was not prepared and that if she relaxed her neutrality in this regard she would be at once subjected to the kind of aerial bombardment from which Great Britain, herself, is now suffering. Furthermore, he said that any steps taken to relax Irish neutrality would result immediately in revolution in Ireland. To my comment that if Great Britain were defeated and invaded, Ireland would in any event suffer the same fate and be subjected to German domination, the Minister replied that he was in entire agreement that that would be the case but the alternatives that they were now up against were either inevitable destruction from the air and possible invasion from the sea by the Germans, or else potential domination by Germany in the event of the British defeat. He said that the complete neutrality policy of de Valera was becoming more and more firmly determined upon and that every message the Minister received from de Valera made this clearer.
The Minister then said that he was very much concerned by the activities of the William Allen White Committee.22 He said that agents of the Committee were circularizing prominent Irishmen throughout the United States urging them to come out for the cession of bases in Ireland to the British and that these agents of the Committee had had so little tact in their representations as to select old time Fenians as the objects of their representations. This, the Minister said, was creating a violent disturbance upon the part of the Irish element in the United States and he feared that very soon there would be on foot Irish-American propaganda to the effect that the British were seeking these bases in Eire solely as a means of restoring British domination over Ireland. He stated this kind of reaction was already well under way in Massachusetts and that from a conversation which he had had in Philadelphia with Cardinal Daugherty two days ago he learned that it was already rife in Pennsylvania.
The Minister said that he had talked with Lord Lothian on this subject and that he stated steps would be taken to prevent the William Allen White Committee from continuing along these lines. He said it was particularly unfortunate that this should happen at a moment [Page 175] when the Irish-American feeling in general had become sympathetic to the British cause. If this propaganda did not stop, he said, all the progress towards British-Irish understanding which had been made in recent years would be lost.
- Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies.↩