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 proposals. England would not cede the Irish waters, she would not cede full fiscal liberty; or again, by a dazzling turn, in the effort to tempt the weaker delegates, she would yield on one of these points and give Ireland such privileges as the grandest Home Rule proposals had not envisaged. All the time, however, the Welshman was sticking to one point: there must be allegiance to the English Crown, no sovereignty. The exclusion of the Six Counties, of course, remained all the time as a fait accompli which the Irish wanted above all else to overcome, and the lost territory was held out as the final bait. If the delegates would sign Lloyd George’s treaty, with its British allegiance the Six Counties would be engineered into the new Dominion. To the bait was added a threat—immediate and terrible war.
The position on the last day, the shameful day when an imperial statesman coerced five exhausted men by threatening to loose upon their people a hideous dragooning that would spare neither age nor sex—that infamous day when Lloyd George copied his fellow-countryman Cromwell in savagery towards a civilised Christian nation—must be studied closely in order to understand the full treachery of the Welshman. On Friday December 2nd, 1921, the Irish delegation brought home a draft treaty which the English had handed to them as the maximum British offer. On Saturday, the Irish Cabinet met for an all-day discussion of the treaty. Beside the President, the Cabinet comprised Griffith, Brugha, Stack, Collins, Barton and Cosgrave. There was sharp division; for Griffith was prepared to take the Dominion, oath and King. However, the Cabinet came to agreement. The delegation, due in London next morning, was to refuse the oath of allegiance and to renew its demand for external association only; Griffith was to inform Lloyd George that the document could not be signed, but must go before the Dail if not vitally modified.
By a former unanimous decision of the Cabinet of the Republic, the British Crown could be recognised as the symbolic 