841D.01/250: Telegram
The Minister in Ireland (Gray) to the Secretary of State
[Received March 3—1:47 a.m.]
36. Pursuant to your No. 26, February 26 I obtained an interview with Mr. De Valera yesterday afternoon. I informed him that I was instructed to give him oral assurances in the sense set forth in the telegram which transmitted my instructions. It seemed desirable to bring to his attention the suggestion made by Hickerson to Brennan so I therefore told him that in order that there might be no question of the exact terms of the assurances I would read him what I had received. I therefore read him your telegram down to the last paragraph.
He said that this relieved his apprehension as to invasion and was duly appreciated but that the intention to apply the sanctions of publicity on the score of American mothers which was now part of the record was sinister and that he regarded it with gravity. I then said with emphasis that this was not an intention nor in any sense a part of the record but merely information transmitted orally to him of the friendly warning given Brennan by a State Department Officer as to what would probably happen if, as a result of his refusal to send away the Axis Legations, it later developed that information had reached the enemy which resulted in loss of American lives.
He said he had done all he could and would continue to do so but that he could not guarantee. This gave me the opening which I had been leading up to. I said this is just the point of our note. It is impossible to guarantee our security and we feel therefore that it is reasonable to ask you to do everything possible not everything short of removing the Germans. If you do not you assume a grave moral responsibility for possible consequences. If it should develop later that information sent out of Ireland should be the cause of some terrible disaster then the consequences suggested by Mr. Hickerson would undoubtedly be visited on you. We hope nothing like that will happen; we hope that you will be successful in suppressing espionage but if you should fail the responsibility is on you.
He attempted to dispute this by repeating that he had done and would do everything possible.
[Page 231]As a result of his calling his Cabinet and Defense Council together immediately after I delivered the note and telling them he had received an ultimatum, arms were issued to the local defense forces and they stood to all night all over Ireland. Rumors of every kind were circulated. The American fleet was to seize the ports, the British fleet was off Dublin. Fighting had broken out at the border. The public were perplexed as Maffey appeared publicly at the army football game in the box with the Irish Minister of War and I took pains to let a Cabinet member know that I was going fishing over the weekend. At one point in the talk he said I shall have to do something now to put a stop to the rumors that are circulating. I had said, you will remember, that on the day I delivered the note at a certain point in reading it you asked if this was an ultimatum and I told you that to the best of my knowledge and belief it was not nor did the text contain an or else course, implying that he was responsible for the rumors. I then asked him if it was reasonable to assume a conspiracy to exert pressure on him in the light of what we have done for him since the war began. I then cited some of the various benefits that we had done him. Finally I told him that a substantially correct version of the three notes which he received had leaked out and had been related to Mr. Brown22 from some person that he had confided in and that if the story broke it would not have come from our Legation and I believed not from British sources either. He said he did not want publicity. I said “that is entirely in your hands. We have no desire to have you crucified by a press campaign and will not give the story out in any immediate future but if you give it out and a storm breaks that is your affair. It is a matter of indifference to us”.
I am preparing a detailed memorandum of the conversation for the record which I shall forward as soon as completed. De Valera told me that he was preparing a written answer refusing our request.
I saw the Canadian Minister this morning. He told me that he delivered orally the note of his Government to De Valera on the evening of February 26. De Valera had asked him to see Maffey and me and request that we give the matter no publicity. I told Kearney that I had already told De Valera that we had no wish to conduct a publicity campaign against him. Kearney promised me a copy of the Canadian note. I think it would be helpful if you communicated to the Canadian Government our appreciation of their note and the helpful role of their representative in Dublin. For reasons which I will communicate I hope you will be able to do this so that it may reach Kearney.
- Aaron S. Brown, Third Secretary of Embassy in Ireland.↩