SCOTT DIED IN 1932 BUT HIS DIARIES FIRST SAW THE LIGHT IN 1961.
I don’t recall any Irish, or other response to them. But they are primes sources for an understanding of the first three decades of the 20th Century.
I quoted here Lloyd George’s statement of 29 October 1921 that if he only had Collins and Griffith to contend with he could do a deal in five minutes. Cathal Brugha, who was not privy to that conversation, said in the Dail that Lloyd George had picked his men.Scott’s Diary from the 2nd December 1921 to 6th December when The Articles of Agreement were signed (in contradictionof their instructions from the Dail Cabinet) under threat, by all the Irish delegates,
Scott wrote
“At parting, I congratulated Lloyd George warmly and he responded – ‘To think’, he said, ‘that we have succeeded at last, in the task that we have both worked for for more than thirty years’ . He was jubilant.”
A year later Lloyd George made Kemal Attaturk an offer he believed would not be refused. And he summoned all Commonwealth Governments to back him up with troops. Attaturk refused the offer. The Commonwealth refused the summons. Conservative backbenchers met and withdrew their party from the Coalition Government. Lloyd George left office never to return, One hundred years later the 1922 Committee is back in the headlines.
I’ll be back mining C.P. Scott’s Diaries. Very Rich Seams. I recommend them to anyone interested in how the world has got to where it is today.
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