Book review: The thread of neutrality between US and Irish diplomats in the 1930s
The author, Bernadette Whelan, is professor emeritus in history at the University of Limerick, and no stranger to Irish foreign policy
Éamon de Valera making a radio broadcast to America as part of the ‘Salute Of The Nations’ programme on January 9, 1939. Picture: Keystone/Getty Images
Sat, 27 Feb, 2021 - 20:00
Review: Frank MacGabhann
Bernadette Whelan
£75.00
AT first glance Éamon de Valera and Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) make odd bedfellows in the title of a book. However, during the time period concerned, the 1930s, there is a thread connecting them, but a thread that will become so threadbare that it will eventually all but snap. That thread is neutrality. In de Valera's eyes, it was a principle, especially once he realised that collective security under the League of Nations was no more than an empty phrase once Mussolini's Italy invaded Abyssinia in 1935 with impunity. In FDR's eyes, it was a tactic forced by American public opinion into an ill-fitting straitjacket that, little by little, he began to wriggle out of by the end of the decade.