The Deputy said it was not the first time he had raised it and he also had given his own additions and constructions to it. He spoke of this message as if it were a treaty. Treaties at least ought to be construed on their texts and their spirit, but again he construed it, and wants to construe it, not as most people try to construe treaties, in the spirit in which they were given and the intention in which they were made, and to the benefit of their own people, if there is a doubt. I do not think it is an unfair line to take that people should construe them in their spirit, their literal meaning, and, if there is a doubt, I do not see why they should construe them against their country, unless for some higher purposes which may serve the interest of their country. In order that there may be no misunderstanding about it, I propose, if I am permitted, to read the latter portion of this message. It consists of three paragraphs. The first two are short and I shall omit them. The final paragraph reads:
"I came to you on a holy mission, a mission of freedom"
—I was addressing the people of the United States as I was leaving—
"I return to my people who sent me, not indeed, as I had dreamed it, with the mission accomplished, but, withal, with a message that will cheer in the dark days that have come upon them and that will inspire the acceptance of such sacrifices as must yet be made. So farewell— young, mighty, fortunate land. No wish that I can express can measure the depth of my esteem for you, or my desire for your welfare and your glory. And farewell, the many dear friends I have made and the tens of thousands, who for the reason that I was the representative of a noble nation and a storied, appealing cause, gave me honours they denied to princes—you will not need the assurance that Ireland will not forget and that Ireland will not be ungrateful."
I say here to-day that Ireland has not forgotten the generosity of the American people and that Ireland is not ungrateful. That is truth. It is true of me personally. Like other members of the House and other people throughout the country, I have closer personal connections with the United States of America than I have with any other country but this. That is true probably of a large number of our people. We have not forgotten the assistance we got from the United States, and we are not ungrateful, but is the position which Deputy Dillon takes up that we have forgotten and that we are ungrateful unless we pay that debt in the blood of our people? Is that the sort of repayment that the people of America were entitled naturally to expect from that message? Is it fair that Deputy Dillon should go and interpret that message so as to get that meaning out of it? I say it is not. It was neither intended by me—because I did not foresee situations like this—nor was it expected by the people of the United States.
I came from the people of the United States and I want you to remember the circumstances. I went over to the United States for two or three main purposes. But the principal purpose for which I went was to secure recognition of the Parliament and the State which had been declared here as a result of a general election, declared here by the representatives of the Irish people. People would naturally say: "How did he expect that the United States Government was going to give recognition to a State so declared? Were they going to do something which was going to give offence to Britain, their associate in the war?" Would one not say that was a very foolish mission, indeed, a very hopeless mission from the start, to go over to the United States and to ask the Government of the United States to recognise a Government that was set up here as the result of the votes of the majority of the Irish people, by a majority of the representatives of the Irish people; to recognise the Republic which was declared here by the Irish people; that it was foolish to expect that; that, so long as Britain did not recognise it, America was not going to do such a foolish thing as to offend Britain by giving such recognition? Yes, indeed, it would have been, in ordinary circumstances, a rather hopeless mission.
What inspired it? Why was it undertaken at all? Well, those of us who lived through the last war and knew what was said during the last war understand it. But there are young people—perhaps Deputy Dillon may be one of them—who may have forgotten about those times, and may, like others, be wondering how it was that we undertook such a mission at all. I will try to bring back some of the circumstances of those times to you by telling you what were the declarations that were made at that time. The United States of America entered the war some time in April, 1917. Long before that, however, President Wilson had given utterance to his views on world affairs, and he had set out the principles which he believed would have to be accepted as basic if there was to be international peace. On May 27th, 1916, speaking at Washington to the League to Enforce Peace, he set down three fundamental principles:—
"First, that every people has a right to choose the sovereignty under which they shall live.
Second, that the small States of the world have a right to enjoy the same respect for their sovereignty and for their territorial integrity that great and powerful nations expect and insist upon.
Third, that the world has a right to be free from every disturbance of its peace that has its origin in agression and disregard of the rights of peoples and nations."
Within a few months of making that statement, these principles were, word for word, being incorporated in the platform of the Democratic Party. They were made the basis on which the election was held as the public policy of the United States, and the democratic President was elected on that basis.
Before he actually took office a second time, President Wilson, on January 22nd, 1917, still before America was in the war, addressing the Senate on the conditions of peace, stated:
"The equality of nations upon which peace must be founded, if it is to last, must be an equality of rights; the guarantees exchanged must neither recognise nor imply a difference between big nations and small; between those that are powerful and those that are weak....
No peace can last, or ought to last, which does not recognise and accept the principle that Governments derive all their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that no right anywhere exists to hand peoples about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were property....
That no nation should seek to extend its polity over any other nation or people, but that every people should be left free to determine its own polity, its own way of development, unhindered, unthreatened, unafraid, the little along with the great and powerful."
These principles of the right of nations to choose their own sovereignty, of the equality of rights between great nations and small, were repeated in speech after speech that the President of the United States at that time delivered and, when America was entering the war in April, 1917, these principles were further elaborated. On May 26th, 1917, in a cablegram to Russia he said:
"Phrases will not accomplish the result. Effective readjustments will, and whatever readjustments are necessary must be made."
On August 27th, 1917, in a message to His Holiness the Pope, he put the recognition of the rights of people as the foundation stone of peace, and he stated:
"The American people believe that peace should rest upon the rights of people, not the rights of Governments—the rights of peoples, great or small, weak or powerful— their equal right to security and freedom and self-government."
On December 4th, 1917, in his address to Congress he said that the justice for which they were fighting would be applied impartially:—
"It will be full impartial justice— justice done at every point and to every nation that the final settlement must affect, our enemies as well as our friends."
On May 26th, 1917, he defined America's war aims in one sentence, in his cabled message to Russia. Speaking of America, he said:
"She is fighting for no advantage or selfish object of her own, but for the liberation of people everywhere from the aggressions of autocratic force."
As the war continued, he emphasised all these principles time and time again, On September 1st, 1918, in a public message to American Labour, he said of the American soldiers that they went as crusaders:—
"They are giving their lives that ... men everywhere be free as they (themselves) insist upon being free ..."
The Armistice, as you know, was signed on November 11th, 1918. The President came to Europe for the Peace Conference. Representatives of this nation sent messages asking that their claims should be heard, but they would not be heard. Going back to America on February 24th, 1919, at Boston, on his return from Paris, he said the world looked to America as to no other belligerent, because America acted her ideas:—
"When they — the European nations—saw that America not only held the ideals, but acted the ideals, they were converted to America and became firm partisans of these ideals ...We set this nation up to make men free ... and now we will make men free."
On March 4th, 1919, at New York, he spoke again on his way to the Peace Conference, and struck a new note of hope for oppressed peoples. Referring to the States that had been oppressed, he said:—
"Europe is a bit sick at heart at this moment, because it sees that statesmen have had no vision. Those who suffer see ... The nations that have long been under the heel ..."
—there are some omissions there; it is a long sentence, but the sense is—
"have called out to the world, generation after generation, for justice, liberation and succour, and no Cabinet in the world has heard them. Private organisations, philanthropic men and women, have poured out their treasure in order to relieve their sufferings, but no nation has said to the nations responsible: ‘You must stop; this thing is intolerable and we will not permit it.'"
Need I say to those who are here what hope these words inspired in our people? If anybody wonders why we could go to the United States of America on the mission that we went on, I ask him to read these words, if they are printed, or to take them away in his memory from what I have said. President Wilson went on to reassert the determination of the United States of America to bring freedom to all peoples:—
"The United States, when it became necessary, would go anywhere where the rights of mankind were threatened."
I have given a rather long list. I could have multiplied that list and given a list at least five times as long, every statement bearing out the position which was taken up by the President of the United States of America. But that was not all. Those Deputies over the half century will remember fairly well the conditions in the last war. They will remember the appeals that were made to our people during that war. They will remember that the statements that were made by the President of the United States of America were repeated, in other forms, by the statesmen of Britain and of other countries. I have here samples of the posters that were issued during that war, asking our young people to come in and serve. They are too long to quote in full. I will give just a sentence or two at the beginning and, perhaps, one or two at the end. The first one here is:—
"Ireland and America. The Star-Spangled Banner is unfurled for the fight. There is not the slightest ambiguity about the language of President Wilson."
I think those who have been listening to the extracts which I have read will admit that that sentence was justified. And it ends:—
"Will Ireland fight for this freedom?"
Perhaps, to make the argument clear, I should read it in entirety:—
"The Star-Spangled Banner is unfurled for the fight. There is not the slightest ambiguity about the language of President Wilson:—
‘Territory, sovereignty, or political relationship—any or all of these—to be settled upon the basis of the free acceptance of that settlement by the people immediately concerned.'
The President also said:—
"We are concerting with our Allies to make not only the liberties of America secure, but the liberties of every other people as well.'
"No man can read these words without applying them to Ireland as well as to Belgium, Poland, the Jugo-Slavs and the Ukraine. The Allies— and America clearly states this—cannot undertake to free the peoples under Germany and Austria and leave other peoples under a system of government which they resent. America, speaking through its President, declares that ‘the liberties of every other people' are as valued and are to be made secure, aye, as the liberties of America. Will Ireland fight for this freedom? America will see her rights are secured."