not fought in order to become a Dominion of the British King. It was then that he uttered his famous phrase—it rings in our ears still— “We are not doctrinaire Republicans.” He meant that Ireland had not declared the Republic for the sake of the Republican form of government, but because allegiance to the Crown of England meant subjection to the English parliament. The Crown is simply the symbol of British power, and that is what Ireland cannot allow within her shores if she is to escape the interference which has been her bane ever since Henry II sought to incorporate this island in the dominions of the English monarchy.
In the tense exchange of messages that followed, Lloyd George tried to force our Government from its claim to sovereignty, while the President insisted that negotiations should be unfettered. At length, an unconditional conference was agreed upon; to consider how Irish national aspirations could be met together with an association with the States that now is called the British Commonwealth. Irish delegates were sent to London with clear instructions to this end. Their credentials instructed them “to negotiate … a Treaty of association and accommodation between Ireland and the Community of Nations known as the British Commonwealth.”
It is important to grasp exactly what the Government of the Republic, by the Dáil and the nation, contemplated. Some form of association with Britain was to be accepted. The reason for this, as the President told Lloyd George and several times stated to the world, was that a minority in Ireland is attached by reasons of sentiment and interest to the British Commonwealth, and the nation as a whole would concede association in order to reconcile these persons. To put the thing more bluntly, the Unionist element, with its fortress of a Six-County Parliament in the North-East, would be conciliated by an arrangement which would permit them, in a free Ireland, to retain relations with Britain for which the older stock, for historical reasons, feels no enthusiasm. As Mr. de Valera wrote to Lloyd George, the Irish Government would be ready to recommend:
“A certain treaty of free Association with the British Commonwealth… had we an assurance that the entry of the nation as a whole into such Association would secure for it the allegiance of the present dissenting minority, to meet whose sentiment alone this step could be contemplated.”
Association with Britain would imply reciprocal citizenship and mutual privileges, together with a military entente for purely defensive purposes; if this arrangement should prove as beneficial to all Ireland as the Unionist element promises, it would justify its continuance. While the Dáil unanimously assented to such an arrangement with England being negotiated, there was this principle to be maintained: that Irish Sovereignty must be preserved. This meant that the English Crown must not intrude into the Irish constitution.
In fine, the essence of the Republic, its sovereignty, was not to be compromised, but its isolation was to be modified by an association such as any sovereign State could enter into with another.
The working out of the plan would be a difficult task, seeing that England would fight us on every word and phrase. External Association was the formula in which the President and that brilliant adviser of the delegation, Erskine Childers, defined the proposal. What was the difference between this and Dominion status? “ Ireland,” the Hon. Pakenham writes, “would not have been a Dominion nor ‘within the Empire.’ There would have been no allegiance to the Crown. Irishmen would not have been British subjects. There would have been ‘reciprocal’ but no ‘common citizenship.” Such was the red line below which the delegation was not to yield anything.
Seeing that 200 pages in Mr. Pakenham’s book, “ Peace by Ordeal” are necessary for the detailed account of how the negotiations went on, point by point, it is obviously impossible to give even an adequate summary here of all the twists and turns with which Lloyd George sought to break down the Irish p