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Volume 7 1941~1945

Doc No.
Date
Subject

No. 135  NAI DFA Secretary's Files P12/3

Personal code telegram from William Warnock to Joseph P. Walshe (Dublin)
(No. 105)

BERLIN, 26 October 1941

With reference to Taoiseach's Wexford speech,1 commented that it is natural for Ireland to feel anxious in view of American expansion policy, which has extended to Iceland and Northern Ireland and may easily spread across Border.

Also reported that Senator Frank McDermott conducting campaign in United States for entry of Ireland into war.

Wireless has started Irish Department conducted by Blair, formerly Paris, speaking under name of Pat O' Brien.2

Another member of the staff, John O'Reilly, young man from Kilrush, once clerk in Customs, Rosslare, who was in Channel Islands as agricultural labourer at the time of the German occupation.3

Both have assured me they will say nothing to endanger Irish neutrality.

It is believed Russian campaign, except in the South, will be over for this year within three weeks. Germans confident of taking Moscow.

1 Speaking in Wexford on 19 October 1941 de Valera stated that the Irish people 'did not recognise the danger that threatens' the country. He called for men of military age to join the Defence Forces as volunteers for the duration of the war or as permanent members.

2 Handwritten marginal note regarding this and the following paragraph: 'Colonel B. informed'.

3 The only part of the British Commonwealth occupied by Germany during the Second World War was the Channel Islands off the coast of Normandy. They were invaded on 30 June 1940.

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