The Deputy also talked about the Berlin Office. I stated here the main reason why this item showed an increase. I explained that it was decided, instead of getting furnished premises on a lease, to take unfurnished premises and furnish them. We took unfurnished premises and almost the entire amount of the sum shown there has gone in the furnishing of the Office with articles made here. To that extent, Deputy Corry's reference to a "travelling show" might be somewhat accurate, though the atmosphere in which he introduced it was not quite happy. Probably there is no better judge of what a travelling show is than the Deputy himself. He asked for statistics as to the number of people who ignored what in his best form he described as "this extraordinary Minister of ours" in Berlin and who approached the British Minister instead. I do not know of any. If the Deputy knows of them, I should like if he would give me information about them. As to the suggestion that I live so much abroad that I do not know what happens to people here, I leave that jest where it is. I think the Deputy himself would not be disimproved if he got an odd experience of travel abroad in order to bring himself up to some type of cultural level that would do him credit both here and abroad.
With regard to the questions raised by Deputy Lemass, I wonder how many people, after Deputy Lemass has finished, know exactly what Deputy Lemass thinks ought to have been done about the Tariff Truce Conference. He stated, in his opening remarks, that the motion was introduced by a member of the British Government and that the Irish Free State Delegates, although against the proposal, did not state they would not go to the Conference. He would know more about the Conference at Geneva if he took the trouble to read the very definite statement of our point of view made at Geneva. There was no statement about our staying away from the Conference, which would afford an opportunity of making our case clear and provide an audience before whom we could make it clear.
Then I notice that the Deputy, in a speech down the country, was very interested in this matter, because he said we were bound to blunder being there, for we either had to object, and so possibly ruin our export trade of tractors, woollens and biscuits, or else we would not object, and that denoted a weakening of our whole tariff policy here. Apparently the Deputy's idea is that the best thing would be to stay away, it being then quite clear that we are against it and so apparently, from his point of view, we would help our exports of woollens, tractors and biscuits. For my part, I think it is much better to go there and have a reasoned explanation of the whole position. Such an attitude would be particularly desirable, and the Deputy might be inclined to see that, if he knew the atmosphere and the circumstances.
In this matter one is really dealing with an assembly which already has had before it a report from the World's Economic Conference and in that report special attention is drawn to countries that are necessarily primarily agricultural and also to countries which have not yet quite reached the point of industrial development of which ordinarily they are thought capable. These people who drew up the World's Economic Conference report stressed the fact that arrangements ought to be made with regard to the consideration, amongst representatives of various nations, of certain matters. That is the atmosphere surrounding our decision to send delegates to the Conference, so that we might be able to make known our own particular position. Those are the people before whom we are sending our delegates and those delegates will plead that special attention should be given to a country such as ours. Of course, there were other countries represented at that Conference.
The Deputy wonders that we did not stand in with Australia, Africa, Canada and India and remain away from those meetings. The Deputy apparently has not yet realised that the Tariff Truce Conference is mainly a European Conference, although not under the auspices of the League of Nations. He apparently does not realise that very few nations outside of the European States attended the Conference and that neither Australia, Canada, Africa nor India can well be stated to belong to the group interested in this matter. Movements may take place with regard to the whole tariff system in Europe, and there may be no reaction or repercussion on events in Australia, Canada, Africa or India. But we are in Europe, and any change in the tariff conditions there, particularly if the change is brought about by the League of Nations, will have an immediate reaction upon us. Immediately it has to fly to the Deputy's head that it is because England goes there that the Free State must follow, while the superior Dominions stand apart. Just for the purpose of argument, for the moment the ordinary party outlook has changed and Australia and India are reckoned amongst the good Dominions, and Africa, which has been held up as the exemplar of the Dominions, still holds that position, but is associated with the others. There would not appear to be any appreciation on the Deputy's part that the geographical position of the countries concerned has possibly a bearing upon the matter, and has modified their views as to whether or not attendance at the Conference was a good thing, nor, apparently, has that aspect of it as from the point of view of this State been realised by the Deputy.
We are told here that the fact that we were actually represented at the Conference and that we did not adopt the attitude of observers implies a willingness to accept the tariff truce. There has been read out a series of newspaper extracts. One was an extract from an article by the political correspondent of the "Independent" on his own; another was the report of an interview with myself, and the third was an authoritative statement from a document sent off to the League of Nations. What did that document say? It did not go into detail, but, roughly, it set out that we were considering how far, conformable with the opinions expressed by the delegation of the Irish Free State at the last Assembly, we could take part in a Conference having for its object, but not as a condition preceding it, the conclusion of a tariff truce.
We felt by being represented at that Conference that we could call attention to the position of undeveloped or under-developed countries, and yet, despite the official announcement heralding the approach of our representatives in a particular way, the Deputy holds that our going there at all implies willingness to accept the tariff truce as the first step. The Deputy thought we were going there to block and obstruct the Conference. He was perturbed as to whether or not we were willing to accept a tariff truce. He thought that we were going to block it and that our going to the Conference would perturb other nations in Europe and so harm our export trade. Again, it is possible to go to Geneva with a special point of view, knowing you are going before a reasoned and reasonable people, that you can make your case before them and that there is no necessity to obstruct our export trade or bring about any breach of policy.
The Deputy said that if he had the feeling that the Executive Council had not changed its tariff policy, then he would not be so anxious about our appearance at the Conference. When the Deputy makes any comment with regard to tariffs in this House it is to the effect that the Government has no tariff policy. Why should he have a suspicion at this stage in this country's development? The Executive Council has already tariffed many articles while the people outside were fighting about shibboleths and bogies. When they were tariffing articles why should there be a suspicion that the policy has changed because two people go to represent a special case before other people who are already attuned by listening to the case and who have expressed themselves as being sympathetic towards it?
[An Ceann Comhairle resumed the Chair.]
The Deputy is afraid that our appearance there is liable to give a wrong impression as to the trend of public opinion in this country. Has he read the speeches delivered at the last League of Nations Assembly by delegates from this country? Has he heard at all, or did he understand from the newspapers at the time that the League of Nations Assembly was sitting, of resolutions proposed by the Irish Free State delegation and not received with such hostility on the part of other nations as to show that the putting forward of our special case was going to bring any odium upon us? Does the Deputy realise that in the end there was a change made on the initiative of the Free State delegation at the Assembly last year with regard to the whole Tariff Conference? Does he realise that originally the proposal was that this Tariff Conference would have handed over to it, if the first resolution had been carried, a settlement of the whole economic policy of the League and that it was at the instance of the Free State delegates that there was a final resolution put in which altered the whole frame-work so that there might be a preliminary Conference such as this? In the end it was decided that there should be a final diplomatic Conference to which members of the League would be called before the economic policy of the League was determined.
That is the safeguard we have— that no matter whether certain nations are agreeable to the letting down of tariffs between themselves, there is going to be no economic policy on the part of the League determined until there is a final conference of all representatives of the League. There, if only there, we can give expression to our status, but we thought it better to give expression to our point of view at the preliminary Conference before certain groups of people. And we are not alone there. There are other nations in an arrested stage of development and they find themselves building up. One does not go to the League expecting to find that it is thought, because you have a proposal running counter to other proposals, that immediately there must necessarily be a breach as between nations. Geneva is a place where different points of view are reconciled. I move that we report progress.
