U.S. At War: Irish Questions

A shillelagh rap from little Eire (pop. 3,000,000) gave the U.S. one more foreign-policy headache last week. To President Roosevelt’s polite request that neutral Eire kick its German and Japanese diplomats out of their grandstand seats for the invasion, President Eamon de Valera returned a flat “No” (see p. 36). Would the U.S. now get tough as it had with neutral Spain, and join Britain in economic sanctions? Or would the President and the State Department, unable to prove a single case of Axis espionage in Eire, be content with having put themselves on record? One clue: around the State Department, keenly conscious of the big U.S. Irish vote, the worried word about Eire last week was: “How do you think the U.S. will react?”