841D.01/248: Telegram
The Minister in Ireland ( Gray ) to the Secretary of State
[Received 7:30 p.m.]
31. The Canadian High Commissioner lunched with me today and told me that his suggestion to his Government regarding De Valera’s request that Canada act as intermediary in requesting a withdrawal of the recent notes presented by America and Britain was that the Canadian Government should propose that the notes be marked secret. I told him that I could give De Valera assurances that there was no intention to inaugurate a propaganda campaign against Eire nor in any predetermined future to publish our note but that I could not recommend to you any restriction upon our freedom of action. I said that we had made a reasonable request without sinister implications and that if De Valera chose to read into that request a meaning not there, responsibility was his. I said that if De Valera should send for me I would be willing as a friend of Ireland to assure him again in this sense and warn him that if he started to dramatize the incident with public announcement of wholly unwarranted implications that American opinion would doubtless interpret his action as it did his publicized protest against our use of Northern Ireland bases.
Repeated to London.