Consider a Scenario where an accredited diplomatist, needing advice on how to handle his mission, conducts a seance and summons up the shade of a statesman who once occupied his own residence.
Most film-makers wouldn’t entertain it for a moment. But writers of genius might once have handled it. Evelyn Waugh, for instance, whose “Scoop” was set in Abyssinia during Mussolini’s annexation of that country. Or Graham Greene, whose “The Comedians” was set in Haiti under Papa Doc Duvalier and his Ton-Ton Macoute goons.
But such a scenario need not be set in a Third World Capital, nor need it star an envoy of a Darker Shade Than Grey. For in Dublin from 1940 to 1947 the American Minister, David Gray,
a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, a relation of Eleanor Roosevelt, indulged in Occult rather than diplomatic activity.He hated and despised the Irish and made no attempt to dissemble. The Taoiseach, Eamon de Valera, fortified by his Christian faith, and mindful of the disparity of military clout between Ireland and the United States, resisted the temptation to kick Gray’s backside, or even to reveal his contempt for him.Dev had been a useful Rugby player in his youth and had over 30 years public service left in him.
The US Minister’s residence, in the Phoenix Park, had formerly been that of Britain’s Chief Secretary for Ireland, A J Balfour (1887-1891), responsible for underhand tactics to discredit Parnell, and naked Coercion. He was helped by Edward Carson, and Peter O’Brien, a Judge nicknamed”Peter the Packer” for his diligence in stuffing juries with landlords and their lackeys. O’Brien, who became Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, waslater reported to be looking for a motor vehicle to seat twelve. Oliver St John Gogarty offered to sell him his own 7 Seater, saying if His Lordship couldn’t pack twelve men into it he’d lost his touch. An incident in Mitchelstown in 1887 in which the RIC shot dead three unarmed men earned the Chief Secretary the name “Bloody.” He had been dead since 1930 and Gray didn’t let that dissuade him from post mortem intercourse.
Balfour was Prime Minister from 1902 to 1905 and Foreign Secretary from 1916 to 1919. Well before the First World War he shocked an Anglophile American when he told him that Britain needed to crush Germany, whose industry and trading prowess would otherwise overtake that of Britain.
The inept adventurer Louis Napoleon, France’s Second Emperor, had picked a quarrel with Prussia in 1870 and lost. The German Empire was proclaimed in Versailles, and two territories, German-speaking Alsace and French-speaking Lorraine annexed by Germany. I believe the territoriesannexed were allowed a form of home rule. Though the newly united Germany acquired some African colonies it had no plans for expansion in Europe. The Ottoman Empire was not in predatory mood either.Following their 1871 defeat France planned for revenge on Germany.
The Entente Cordiale of 1904 ended the centuries old status of France as England’s least favoured (free) nation. Joint military planning got underway and a Committee of Imperial Defence prepared for war on Germany. Every British consulate in foreign ports monitored the movements of German merchant ships, spies such as T E Lawrence toured Ottoman ruled territories, sailors on “Courtesy Visits” to Constantinople took time to examine the Dardanelles, new Battleships “Dreadnoughts” and Battle Cruisers and other warships were built in great numbers, commercial ships were specially designed, and subsidized by the taxpayer to serve warlike purposes, the LUSITANIA, for example.
An Official Secrets was Act passed, secret services later to be called MI5 and MI6 established, a Territorial Army Reserve established. Balfour was involved, as were other Conservatives when they were out of office, and Liberals in office, such as Sir Edward Grey, Foreign Secretary and Herbert Asquith,Prime Minister. Though the whole world knew about the Naval build-up, many Liberals, including Cabinet members, were unaware of thefixed intention of smashing Germany and stripping the Ottoman Empire of strategic territories promising oil. Britain had encouraged Italy to seize Libya in 1910, a task not completed until twenty years later under Mussolini. There had been some nasty business in the Balkans where Russia backed Orthodox Christians in Greece against the Turks, and in Serbia against the Austrians. The Serbian State was virtually a bandit state whose Secret Service planned the Assassination of Archduke Ferdinand.Britain, which with France and the Ottomans fought a war in the 1850s to keep Russia from gaining a warm waterport, encouraged the Russians with the bait of Constantinople. France and Russia were planning to squeeze Germany with their vast armies. The British Navy would deny Germany exit from her North Sea Ports and ferry a relatively small army across the Channel. It would be all over by Christmas. The official story today is that Europe sleepwalkedminto War. At the time the Germans were depicted as the aggressors, and the German state was smashed, the Kaiser, whom the allies wanted to hang, or at least imprison, was given asylum in Holland. A blockade following the Armistice starved hundreds of thousands of German civilians to death. A new German government was forced to confess to German criminality and the headstones on the graves of their soldiers coloured black to signify their sins. As in IRAQ today there is no recognisable state, nor in Libya, or perhaps, Syria. Factional armies of left and rightmarose from the German State’s destruction. Russia was in Civil War, the Austria -Hungarian Empire dissolved into fractious states, with the exception of the highly successful Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia.!!!!
In London’s St Paul’s Cathedral there is an inscription on the tomb of Sir Christopher Wren – “Lector – si monumentum requiris -Circumspice”meaning “Reader, if you want his monument – Look around you.” From Palestine, through Lebanon, Iraq, Syria,Libya, Turkey, up through Europe, to “the Jungle” at Calais and the American War-planes at Shannon Airport” the blood sweat and tears of hundreds of millions of our species are the monument to Bloody Balfour. Perhaps the intelligence acquired through David Gray’s seances in the Phoenix Park inspired American statecraft from his day to those of our grandchildren?
But writers of genius might once have handled it. Evelyn Waugh, for instance, whose “Scoop” was set in Abyssinia during Mussolini’s annexation of that country. Where is this information?