Sir Thomas Inskip told me this afternoon that a Committee was sitting under the Chairmanship of Lord Maugham2, their Chancellor, and he thought it likely that they would find in connection with the forthcoming Conscription Bill that Irishmen formally resident in this country would, under that measure, be liable to be called up for the military service. He though Mr. de Valera would not think that unreasonable. I made no comment.
He then said that the Cabinet had had a long discussion this morning when the Prime Minister had informed them of the grave anxiety which Mr. de Valera and his Government felt at the possibility of any form of Conscription being applied to Northern Ireland.
I enquired whether any reference to Northern Ireland would appear in the Bill which would be printed this evening. He replied by reading out the following:
CLAUSE 15. His Majesty may by Order in Council direct that the Act shall extend to Northern Ireland and to the Isle of Man, subject to such modifications and adaptations as may be specified in the Order.
It appeared that the United Kingdom Minister for the purpose of this contingent provision for Northern Ireland was the British Minister of Labour and a certain amount of time would elapse before anything could be done, assuming that the Act were to apply to Northern Ireland. At my request he wrote the following note:
'Before the Bill can be brought into operation in Northern Ireland certainadministrative arrangements and modifications would have to be made. These will take time and there will therefore be full opportunity for discussion between the interested Governments'.
I pointed out that the last sentence assumed that Mr. de Valera would be willing to discuss a proposal to apply Conscription to the Six Counties. I made it clear that I had no authority to accept such an assumption nor did I think there was the least likelihood of Mr. de Valera entering upon such a discussion. Sir Thomas Inskip said that it would make their task almost impossible if we did not agree to discuss the matter.
They were, he assured me, fully alive to the difficulties of the situation and the very last thing in their minds was to provoke or even to appear to provoke any trouble in Ireland itself or as between Ireland and England.
At the Cabinet that morning they had discussed various courses. One was to have Conscription in Northern Ireland but to so frame the Order in the Council as to enable a Nationalist to 'opt out' if he so wished. A second course was to provide exemption much on the same lines as conscientious objectors secured exemption in this country. A third plan was to allow a Nationalist exemption provided that he joined the Volunteer force in Éire.
I said the Irish Government would be profoundly dismayed at what Sir Thomas Inskip had told me. After my conversation with Mr. Chamberlain and a number of his colleagues it did seem that - albeit at a late stage - the extreme gravity of the situation was now realised. The British must surely know now that it was the merest statement of fact to say that the extension of any form of Conscription to one, let alone six, of our Irish Counties would involve the ending of our relations with Britain. Yet the proposed Clause 15 and the expedients he had told me of showed no recognition of this inevitable consequence but suggested that they still contemplated compulsion in the North. Mr. de Valera would clearly want to know whether that was the position.
Sir Thomas Inskip said that in all honesty and straightforwardness he could assure me that he did not know what would be done. He did not know whether Conscription would be applied to the Six Counties nor did the Cabinet know. He was saying this to me privately so that Mr. de Valera might know exactly where he, Sir Thomas Inskip, and his colleagues stood at this moment. He would ask that this statement of his should not be used in public debate because it might only tend to deterioration of the present position. He would deplore at this moment any assertion that there would be Conscription and equally deplore any assertion that there would not be. This fits in with Mr. Chamberlain's reply to the Press that the question was under consideration, and I got the impression from Sir Thomas Inskip that he was telling the truth and was not employing a diplomatic reservation.
The British, Sir Thomas Inskip said, were between the devil and the deep blue sea because there was just as much explosive material on the Unionist side in the Six Counties as there was Nationalist. They had incurred bitter discontent from the Unionists in the North by the settlement which they had made with the Irish Government last year. He was not saying that the settlement was not the right one to make; he merely wished to make clear how awkward the position of the British Government was. I said he could not object to my saying in the settlement which they made in returning the Ports they were only giving back what was obviously ours, and expressing a purely personal opinion I thought the British got off far too lightly in the financial settlement.
He made at some length an appeal for help. It would be remembered that the Germans were encouraged in 1914 by the threat of civil war in Ireland. If there was any repetition of this Herr Hitler might be influenced in what were already dangerous designs so that a tremendous responsibility rested upon all to be statesmen instead of politicians. Could not Mr. de Valera do something to assist in this most difficult situation?
I referred him to the letter I handed to Mr. Chamberlain3
in which Mr. de Valera had said:
'In union with our fellow-countrymen in the Six Counties we are prepared to undertake the defence of the whole of Ireland against any enemy seeking to get a foothold there'.
Sir Thomas Inskip responded very readily indeed to this suggestion saying that it might well prove to yield a solution.
