My dear Fred,
I duly received your personal and confidential letter of the 7th December.¹ I know very well how pressed you have been these months past, and, indeed, cannot imagine how you reach upon everything. So please do not think again of being in my bad books.

The amount of work now being done by Foreign Offices is fantastic and the strain upon staffs has become unbearable. When I came here in 1939 the Canadian External Affairs staff was little more than a hundred at home and abroad. Now it is over a thousand. If we become a member of UNO you will probably have to set up a whole new section in the Department to handle the work as well as to provide staff for a permanent delegation in New York and almost continuous special delegations from one end of the year to the other.

It is very thoughtful indeed of you to enquire as to how we stand financially in connection with the Taoiseach's visit in September. We are making up the account and you will see how we stand. You sanctioned a substantial sum before the visit began, six thousand dollars. I am afraid we underestimated the cost of the visit when requesting sanction for that sum. We will have to ask you to recommend sanction for an additional sum of five hundred dollars. The expenses were heavy especially in Cities other than Ottawa. The new house solved our problem here, but, of course, we had to put an expensive new staff in 450 Daly as well as keep on our old staff in 415 Wilbrod which we ourselves continued to occupy until after the visit. I may have to ask you to let me certify a few items in the account as expenditure properly incurred.

I am glad you have seen so much of Norman Robertson. He is very able, a bit philosophical, and personally very friendly. He has a fine mind, but lacks Pearson's direct approach and readiness to decide. I was disappointed that he did not accept our views on the nationality issue in 1946. If he had done so they would have no legal problem now so far as we are concerned.

Robertson very probably did not like the Taoiseach's speech to the Bar Association. He would certainly not be enthusiastic about it. His point would be that the Bar Association meeting was a professional, and not a political occasion. John Hackett² entirely disapproved the speech, as did many others. Charlie Burchell³ and John Read,⁴ however, did not disapprove it to me. Another rough patch would be the announcement, in reply to a question at the Press conference in Ottawa, of the intention to repeal the External Relations Act. I should add that, during the conversation at Kingsmere,⁵ Robertson made the running against the Taoiseach on the question of trade preferences. He felt that a collective title of countries enjoying the preferences would be essential in order to answer claims by non-Commonwealth countries which might raise the most favoured nation point. The Taoiseach, at one stage, became a little impatient with Robertson for his persistence after Pearson, then head of the Department, had said that he saw no insurmountable difficulty on the trade preferences side. Robertson was obviously embarrassed and that may throw a light on his general frame of mind.

My own impressions are as follows. Perhaps the chief value of the visit was that it took place just before the Republic Bill was introduced. I think that the Taoiseach made a great impression on Mr. King and on Mr. Pearson in his conversations by reason of his deep seriousness and sincerity and his frank and friendly approach. The Taoiseach and Mr. King were very much at home with each other during the week the Taoiseach spent in Ottawa. All that may, I think, have been a help in the later talks in London and Paris. The value of the visit in that connection would have been as great if the Taoiseach had chosen a different subject for the Bar Association address and if he had (as we had suggested to him before he came) avoided any public statement on Irish constitutional policy. In a speech in Cork on his return he referred to the reason for the course he took.⁶

The Taoiseach was happiest in his addresses to the Canadian Club of Ottawa (Irish Canadian friendship; eulogy of Prime Minister King, who was present); the Canadian Institute of International Relations (human rights in the Irish Constitution; replies to questions on partition etc. off the record); the Civic reception gathering in Toronto (the Irish as a hard-headed business race and not a ne'er to do well, happy go lucky people); the Lawyers Club of Toronto (a brief review of judicial decisions in Ireland on fundamental personal rights); and in his French addresses at the University of Montreal (the University of Montreal as a shield of Western culture) and the Société St. Jean Baptiste the spearhead organization of Canadian nationalism (Ireland's debt to the Province of Quebec). The ten minutes speech over the French network at the Societé St. Jean Baptiste 'captured all French Canada'. The words quoted are those of Archbishop Charbonneau⁷ to me some weeks ago. I do not need to add that when the Taoiseach spoke to our own people e.g. the members of St. Patrick's Society, Montreal, (off the record) and the congregation assembled in the grounds of St. Patrick's Church, Quebec, after the special Mass arranged by the Rector, he was exceptionally good and wholeheartedly acclaimed.

You do not need to imagine the difficulties which, on every hand, beset the success of the first visit of an Irish Prime Minister to Canada since the war. Our attitude to the war is still resented or misunderstood. You will know how little disposed e.g. an Orange Mayor of Toronto would be to give a Civic reception for the head of a Dublin Government at any time. But Mayor McCallum⁸ did it in September not at our request but at the request of friends like Senator McGuire⁹ whom we asked to approach him, as it were, on their own account. The staff of the Mission alone could not possibly have coped with the programme of the visit. We did plan every detail but we had to enlist the help of many friends in Cities like Quebec and Toronto, hundreds of miles from Ottawa. Canada is a complicated country for an official visitor on account of the number of Lieutenant Governors, Premiers, Mayors, Archbishops, Universities, and societies of one kind or another. The success which the Taoiseach's visit undoubtedly became from the standpoint of his reception by every appropriate authority and body in four of Canada's most important Cities (three of them capital Cities) was almost entirely due to friends of Ireland of all races who stood by us on their own initiative or at our instance. But for them the visit could not have been much more than the Bar Association engagement and a formal call on Ottawa.

I hope it will not be too long until the Minister pays a visit to this country. Nothing but good could come of it. There must - don't you think? - be far more coming and going. Our people here should not be made to feel isolated or neglected as they have felt and will do more and more in the future if we do not on our part give more public proof of our belief in the basic friendship of the two countries above and beyond the connection now broken. My successor will have a far better opportunity than I have had during the larger part of my long stay here of bringing Ireland closer to Canada and Canada closer to Ireland by positive work in political and cultural fields. The soil of this great land is well prepared for the good seed we have to sow.

I am grateful for all of your letter of the 7th December, but, in a special way for its confirmation of the change you are making here. I shall, of course, be delighted to go to Paris and am eagerly looking forward to the new assignment. I need hardly say how greatly honoured I feel to be offered so important a post. You were so kind as to consult my personal wishes with regard to the arrangements. I am, therefore, making the following suggestion. It would, I think, be desirable for me to make a goodwill tour across Canada - especially at this time - before I leave. There would be no speeches except of a complimentary and purely formal kind. Mona should, I think, accompany me on the tour. We are the only representatives in Ottawa, except the most recent arrivals, who have never gone across the country. We have received many invitations from various cities from time to time. The trip would not take longer than about three weeks, and would not cost a great deal. I could submit an estimate. I gather from your letter that there is some doubt as to when the Republic Act will be put into operation. If it does not go into operation until, say, April, and if your arrangements permitted of our staying here until then, the children would be able to get full credit for the school year, 1948. Maurice is going on fourteen. This is not a matter which I would mention at all but for your very thoughtful wish to have me place whatever occurs to me before you. The chief suggestion I have to make is that we should make a goodwill tour early in the New Year.

We have been reading the Dáil and Senate debates on the Bill. I ran off a draft for the Taoiseach for the Second Reading. He particularly asked me to do it the day he left Toronto for Buffalo. He very graciously used a few points and phrases. I am afraid I fell down on his Canadian speeches. We simply had not the time or energy to prepare many texts: I did three or four, Kennedy did two,¹⁰ one for Fordham and one for the Christian Brothers, New York. We could have done more if we had not to attend to hour to hour engagements each day for three weeks. Paddy Lynch worked like a Trojan day and night.

[matter omitted]

Many thanks for your kind seasonal good wishes. Mona and I send to Judy¹¹ and you and all your dear ones greetings for Christmas and our best of wishes for your health, happiness, and prosperity in the New Year.