Sir,—Allow me to add to Michael Kennedy’s informative article (HI 31.5, Sept./Oct. 2023, pp 44–6) on the above topic by highlighting Éamon de Valera’s reaction to the Soviet Union’s application to join the League in 1934 and his government’s attitude to subsequent Soviet involvement. The Soviets’ application was determined by Adolf Hitler’s accession to power in Germany and the imminent prospects of a European war. The Soviet representative at Geneva was the People’s Commissar of Foreign Affairs, Maxim Litvinov. He championed a new Soviet policy of seeking a form of collective security to ensnare Nazi Germany in a web of multilateral guarantees or, failing this, to form an alliance to hamstring Hitler’s wildest ambitions.
As noted by the international relations author Patrick Keatinge, prior to de Valera’s election to power in 1932 his regard for the League’s willingness to act as an effective instrument for world peace had been ‘marked by a qualified pessimism’. Once in office, however, he was determined, as the leader of a small nation, to play his part in seeking peace and security in Europe. Defying domestic opposition from Cumann na nGaedheal and church indignation (while making clear his opposition to Soviet domestic policies, especially on religion), de Valera articulated his support for Soviet admission at the League’s Plenary Session on 12 September 1934:
‘Why? Because it is obvious that anyone who has the interest of the League at heart and looks upon the League as an instrument for the preservation of world peace must desire to see in the League a nation of the importance of Russia. Her territory is two, perhaps three, times the size of the rest of Europe; she has a population, I believe, of some one hundred and sixty-five millions. Is it not obvious, a priori, that there must be a strong feeling on the part of everybody who wishes well of the League in favour of having such a nation participate in the League’s work?’
His contribution had the effect of enhancing Ireland’s international reputation, as shown in a communication from the young Irish diplomat Frederick Boland to the Department of External Affairs:
‘The curious thing is that the speech seems to have pleased everybody, both those who are in favour of Russia’s entry into the League and those who are against it; and a great many people here are loud in their praises of the tact and delicacy with which the President publicly discussed the question of Russia’s entry into the League at a moment at which the private, hotel-bedroom conversations on the subject were at a peculiarly difficult and delicate stage.’
Nevertheless, Irish support for Soviet participation in the League was restrictive. This became evident in 1935 when F.T. Cremins, the Irish permanent delegate to the League, was instructed by the government to ‘immediately’ make a démarche with Secretary-General Joseph Avenol against the allocation of duties to Marcel Rosenberg, the Soviet Union’s appointee as Under Secretary-General of the League. The instruction was made on the basis of ‘a fundamental conflict of principles and ideals [which] separates the Soviet Union from Christian states’ and was informed by communications received from Cardinal Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli at the Vatican. Cardinal Pacelli (who subsequently reigned as Pope Pius XII) feared that the Soviet appointee would be given charge of the League’s health committee and the formulation of policies on birth-control measures. After Marcel Rosenberg took up his post at the League’s secretariat, the Irish delegate reported to Iveagh House that Rosenberg was ‘allocated no duties of a direct nature … he is known in the lobbies as the Under Secretary-General without portfolio’.—Yours etc.,
Dr MICHAEL QUINN
Author of Irish–Soviet diplomatic and friendship relations, 1917–91 (Umiskin Press, 2017)