841D.01/235a: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in the United Kingdom ( Winant )4
831. We are pleased to know that Cranborne believes the War Cabinet will approve our proposed approach to the Irish Government. We hope that we may receive official notice of such approval as soon as possible.
We have made certain minor changes in Mr. Gray’s5 draft note to de Valera and the revised draft is quoted below. Please show this draft to the British authorities and obtain their views on the proposed wording. We agree entirely that the British Government should support us in a note to be delivered simultaneously.
We are, of course, willing to arrange timing of any publicity to meet requirements of security. We do feel strongly, however, that the approach should be made at the earliest possible date.
The text of the draft note as it now stands follows:
Your Excellency will recall that in your speech at Cork delivered on the fourteenth of December, 19416 you expressed sentiments of special friendship for the American people on the occasion of their entry into the present war and closed by saying, “The policy of the state remains unchanged. We can only be a friendly neutral.” As you will also recall, extracts of this speech were transmitted to the President by your Minister in Washington. The President, while conveying his appreciation for this expression of friendship, stated his confidence that the Irish Government and the Irish people, whose freedom is at stake no less than ours, would know how to meet their responsibilities in this situation.7
It has become increasingly apparent that despite the declared desire of the Irish Government that its neutrality should not operate in favor of either of the belligerents, it has in fact operated and continues to operate in favor of the Axis powers and against the United Nations on whom your security and the maintenance of your national economy depend. One of the gravest and most inequitable results of this situation is the opportunity for highly organized espionage which the geographical position of Ireland affords the Axis and denies the United Nations. Situated as you are in close proximity to Britain, divided only by an intangible boundary from Northern Ireland, where are situated important American bases, with continuous traffic to and from both countries, Axis agents enjoy almost unrestricted opportunity for bringing military information of vital importance from Great Britain and Northern Ireland into Ireland and from there transmitting it by various routes and methods to Germany. No [Page 218] opportunity corresponding to this is open to the United Nations, for the Axis has no military dispositions which may be observed from Ireland.
We do not question the good faith of the Irish Government in its efforts to suppress Axis espionage. Whether or to what extent it has succeeded in preventing acts of espionage against American shipping and American forces in Great Britain and Northern Ireland is, of course, impossible to determine with certainty. Nevertheless, it is a fact that German and Japanese diplomatic and consular representatives still continue to reside in Dublin and enjoy the special privileges and immunities customarily accorded to such officials. That Axis representatives in neutral countries use these special privileges and immunities as a cloak for espionage activities against the United Nations has been demonstrated over and over again. It would be naive to assume that Axis agencies have not exploited conditions to the full in Ireland as they have in other countries. It is our understanding that the German Legation in Dublin, until recently at least, has had in its possession a radio sending set which obviously could be used to radio information to Germany. It is also not without point that German planes recently dropped two parachutists in Ireland.
As you know from common report, United Nations military operations are in preparation in both Britain and Northern Ireland. It is vital that information from which may be deduced their nature and direction should not reach the enemy. Not only the success of the operations but the lives of thousands of United Nations’ soldiers are at stake.
We request therefore, that the Irish Government take appropriate steps for the recall of German and Japanese representatives in Ireland. We should be lacking in candor if we did not state our hope that this action will take the form of severance of all diplomatic relations between Ireland and these two countries. You will, of course, readily understand the compelling reasons why we ask as an absolute minimum the removal of these Axis representatives whose presence in Ireland must inevitably be regarded as constituting a danger to the lives of American soldiers and to the success of Allied military operations.
It is hardly necessary to point out that time is of extreme importance and that we trust Your Excellency will favor us with your reply at your early convenience.
- Text of this telegram was quoted in telegram 13 of the same date to Dublin.↩
- David Gray, Minister in Ireland.↩
- For summary of speech, see the New York Times, December 15, 1941, p. 3.↩
- For text of the President’s message sent to the Irish Minister on December 22, 1941, to be transmitted to de Valera, see Foreign Relations, 1941, vol. iii, p. 251.↩