August 30 1924
“A vast amount of energy that might be usefully conserved for future use, or else devoted to more practical ends, is presently being expended on the compilation of additional ‘Boundary’ literature. The old arguments are re-modelled – not altered in any essential particular; the old assertions and denials are reiterated; the prophecies and threats which have been more or less familiar to the public mind since AD 1886 are refurbished, brought up to date, and issued as ‘new and original’ contributions to the public store of ‘food for thought’.”
The above sentences were published in yesterday’s Irish News: Mr [Éamon] De Valera had just discovered and revealed a letter written by himself to Mr [David] Lloyd George on the 19th of July 1921. An article on the situation in yesterday’s “Derry Journal” began thus: “It seems that the battle of words between those who accepted the Treaty and those who rejected it as to particular provisions relating to the position of the minority in the north-east is going to be interminable.”
We have a reply this morning from the Publicity Department of the Free State Government to Mr De Valera’s argument based on his old-new letter. No doubt Mr De Valera’s publicity agents will issue a rejoinder. The controversialists have reverted to the point at which they parted company towards the middle of December,1921.
According to Mr De Valera now: “At no time did he ever put forward any proposal under which any part of Ireland would be free to set up a separate parliament independent of the rest of Ireland.”
The FS publicists simply quote a passage from Mr De Valera’s Document No 2 (Second Edition): “In order to make manifest our desire not to bring force of coercion to bear upon any substantial part of the province of Ulster whose inhabitants may now be unwilling to accept the national authority, we are prepared to grant to that portion of Ulster which is defined as Northern Ireland in the British Government of Ireland Act 1920 privileges and safeguards NOT LESS substantial than those provided for in the ‘Articles of Agreement for a Treaty between Great Britain and Ireland’, signed in London on December 6th 1921.″
All concerned have been moving stupidly around a circle since the end of 1921. They find it easier and more convenient to waste time and energy in the profitless work of hunting for a few grains of “arguments” in the threshed-out straw of bootless controversies.
