Thomas Hughes Kelly by making them its treasurers. The latter assured MacNeill that he would ensure that Fine Gaedhael served its intended purposes, including Kelly’s own personal plan to fund various American university scholarships in Irish studies. This was an educational initiative that matched the sensibilities of Katherine Hughes, who, like MacWhite, considered the Parisian conference a success, particularly in appealing to French opinion.152 MacNeill, however, considered that the four other proposed members of the executive, namely de Valera, Brennan, O’Brien and Scotsman Henry Hutchinson, had no purpose other than to launch a new political movement within Britain in opposition to the Irish government. Therefore, he reported to Gavan Duffy that ‘the organisation established in Paris is not one in which confidence can be placed’.153 On the return of all the Irish delegates to Dublin, however, de Valera would re-enter the Dáil to place his case to the contrary.
The Dáil debates from February to June 1922 were often acrimonious and usually revolved around a single point: obstructionist queries from de Valera’s supporters whether or not the Dáil was functioning as a sovereign assembly and repeated efforts by the Dáil cabinet or its supporters to explain how the transfer of powers was only beginning. Perhaps the best illustration of this was Griffith’s statement that the Dáil was indeed a sovereign assembly but that Ireland’s annual policing budget would cost £4 million, and until Westminster gave its formal consent to the treaty agreement (the British cabinet had arranged that this was not due to take place until one year after the agreement was signed) the Dáil’s civil service could not yet count on the support of the country’s financial institutions to fund such schemes.154 Practically speaking, this meant that law and order was temporarily suspended, making London’s exercise of its year-long moratorium the root of most Irish political difficulties throughout 1922. The Fine Gaedhael initiative, which all parties declared their wish to see succeed, was one matter that the Dáil felt that it could sort out by itself. One proposal made at Paris was implemented almost immediately. This was planning the holding of an Irish Olympic Games, known as the Tailteann Games, as an international tourist attraction in Dublin.155 The first of such events would be held under state patronage in 1924 and be the largest sport event held in the world that year.156 By contrast, state patronage was delayed for Fine Gaedhael itself. This was intended to be a permanent body to keep the Irish government in perpetual touch with an Irish diaspora which would help to promote Irish trade worldwide. De Valera requested that the cabinet provide £5,000 support immediately and typified Gavan Duffy and Griffith’s hesitancy in offering funding to Fine Gaedhael, in deference to MacNeill’s judgment, as ill-befitting their records in attempting to promote Ireland in international relations. In doing so, de Valera even warned: ‘When the Minister of Foreign Affairs [Duffy] may find that he is not able to function and when there is a grip on him under the new Free State Constitution, you will be very glad to have some unofficial non-government machine by which Ireland’s interests in foreign countries can be safeguarded.’157
In a manner akin to the previous initiative of the Irish White Cross, an organisation such as Fine Gaedhael needed to be a non-governmental organisation that was legally registered in each of its host countries without actually being state managed. Therefore, there was some logic in de Valera’s recommendation that ‘if it is valuable at all, it will be valuable because of its work as an autonomous self-supporting organisation … the Government … ought to retire from the business’.158 A Dáil committee headed by Patrick MacCartan practically dismissed MacNeill’s objections. Although Michael Collins, as Minister of Finance, maintained that he had agreed with Boland that Fine Gaedhael could receive some form of government loan, Boland himself declared that Fine Gaedhael could ‘finance itself’ without the Dáil’s support. Gavan Duffy stated on 8 June that the issue was being suspended for the time being, as the next international conference under Fine Gaedhael’s management was not due to take place until 1925,159 but neither Fine Gaedhael nor a World Conference of the Irish Race would meet again. Its records indicate that Brennan wound up the association in September 1924 upon using its funds precisely as MacNeill had predicted: to form a new party political newspaper for de Valera.160 This would seem to indicate that, contrary to Brennan’s recollections,161 a scramble for party-political capital rather than diplomatic savvy had won the day.
In the wake of the Parisian conference, Marc Sangnier had made a very sympathetic address to de Valera, in which he described him as a ‘world-famed champion of liberty’ and argued that ‘the cause of Ireland was a cause that rightly belongs to the world’.162 While the French national press had paid attention to Griffith, the French consul in Dublin privately considered de Valera to be ‘the only real statesman that Ireland possesses’.163 However, the outbreak of hostilities in June 1922 practically silenced for good the sympathy of international observers like Sangnier and Thomas Hughes Kelly, and also augmented the belief in Ireland that Britain was attempting to smother Irish national aspirations as much as possible. This did not work to de Valera’s advantage. Instead, it simply lessened the opportunities available to present a persuasive case regarding the Irish situation. Responding to Sangnier in January 1922, de Valera had argued that Irishmen agreed that
Their fight was not for Ireland alone … Their fight was for the reign of true democracy and true internationalism … The widespread influence of the Irish race would be instrumental in saving for humanity the democratic principle of which President Wilson had been the chief exponent during the war and which had been lost at the [Versailles] peace. The Irish people were determined to save those principles for the world … France, with America, was regarded [in Ireland] as the leading nation in modern democratic ideals.164
British embargos on all desired Irish reforms ensured that it would take several years before the Irish Free State could start to become operational. This quickly led international observers to jump to the conclusion that ‘after enjoying the doubtful dignity of being a world question the Irish problem is once more domestic’.165 Ignoring Griffith’s protests that London was breaking the spirit of the treaty agreement,166 in early June 1922 the British government resolved to keep complete control of all Irish finances until such time as it was satisfied that Irish public opinion was not breaking the spirit of the treaty agreement and, in particular, obnoxious parties were arrested.167 A mysterious killing in London and the kidnapping of the would-be Irish army leader J.J. O’Connell prompted the Dáil to act, but an impression soon existed, both nationally and internationally, that the proposed Free State administration was in a helpless state after the sudden deaths of Griffith, Collins and Boland and the nominal assumption of the reigns of central government by W.T. Cosgrave, a former minister for local government. Noting this trend, an American commentator pointed to the presence of George Gavan Duffy as Irish foreign affairs minister as an indication that ‘the complete resources of Sinn Féin statesmanship have certainly not been exhausted’.168 Duffy resigned suddenly, however, in September 1922 upon the creation of a new ‘Department of External Affairs’ under Desmond FitzGerald and Joseph Walshe that Whitehall expected to abandon any intention of upholding a separate Irish foreign policy.169
