History: This book tells the story of a quite remarkable Irishman who served his country through some of the most dangerous days of the second World War - and went on to do so for many years after.
Con Cremin is one of the greats of the Irish diplomatic service, though outside the ranks of professional diplomats and historians he was - and is - little known. This book goes a long way to remedying this.
Con Cremin joined the Department of External Affairs in 1935, when he was 27 years old. At that time the department had no more than 20 staff, had yet to move to Iveagh House (which it did in 1940) and was located on the top floor of the Department of Agriculture in Merrion Square.
Cremin was a Kerryman, born in Kenmare. He was educated at St Brendan's in Killarney and University College Cork, where he studied classics and commerce, excelling in each before winning a travelling studentship in classics, which gave him three years of extensive travel and study. His supervisor felt "he did not do terribly much during these three years" - except study in the British School in Athens, excavate at Ithaca, Perachora and Athens and also at Cusk, Co Limerick, study German in Munich and receive a diploma from Oxford. Not much?
This book by Niall Keogh tells the story of Cremin's diplomatic career, especially in France before the fall in 1940, the period in Vichy, his time in Berlin right up to the death of Hitler, then Lisbon, Paris, the Vatican and finally London from 1956 to 1958.
This is a worthwhile book based on a rich seam of archive material. But there are a number of curiosities and defects. There is no introduction and nowhere are we told of the provenance of the work. Clearly, it began its life as a thesis and its principal defect is that it has not managed the transition from thesis to book nearly as well as it might. It could have done with being better edited, especially in the setting of events in context and in the delineating of personality. The style, as a result, does not flow as smoothly as it might, which is a pity given the richness of the material available.
That said, it is an important book, especially in the insights it gives us into the human dimension of our foreign policy at a highly dangerous time. Not once, but many times, Con Cremin risked his own safety and endured great privations in the interest of serving his country. He was at risk during the fall of France and found himself isolated during his time in Vichy; he stayed on in a collapsing Germany far longer than was strictly necessary, long after others had fled, because he believed it was the right thing for a neutral country to do. He worked exceptionally hard and often at great danger to himself to protect the interests of Irish citizens who had fallen foul of German law, saving some from almost certain death - in one instance to the extent of taking one unfortunate women, a minor British spy, into his family to get her out of Germany.
CREMIN WAS INTELLECTUALLY very bright, but modest and matter-of-fact in his approach to his work, with a great sense of practicality and a willingness to adopt a hands-on approach in the most difficult and often unglamorous of situations. His story illustrates clearly that diplomacy is much more about hard work than about Ferrero Rocher.
Vichy and Berlin are the high points of this book. Vichy was a lonely, drab, isolated posting. Food and fuel were scarce, there was little to do, and the regime was grim and venal. Cremin bravely shunned the Nazis, whom he despised. He had little time for the regime itself, unlike his Civil Service boss, Joe Walshe.
By 1943, Ireland was one of only eight missions left in Vichy. The question arises as to why Ireland persisted in its recognition of the Vichy regime and did not recognise the Free French.
The reason was, in part, the persistence of Joe Walshe, in his attachment to Pétain's National Revolution, with its call for a return to the traditional Catholic values of work, family and country, and also in Walshe's belief in Britain's inevitable defeat and his attempts to prepare Ireland for such an eventuality. Walshe's dangerous view was that "our destiny henceforth will be cast with that of the continental Catholic nations".
The great value of Cremin's reporting and that of his superior, Seán Murphy, was that they made sure a counterview was strongly expressed and that de Valera had clear and direct views on the vulnerability, venality and internal weaknesses of the Vichy regime, and later on, similar honest and informed reporting of the true situation in Berlin.
In very dangerous times, it was the honesty and the quality of this reporting that made a real difference to the formation of Irish foreign policy. Of all the valuable things Con Cremin did in an outstanding life of public service, this was probably the most important.
Maurice Manning is president of the Irish Human Rights Commission. He has written extensively on 20th-century Irish politics. His first book, The Blueshirts, has recently been reissued by Gill & Macmillan
Con Cremin: Ireland's Wartime Diplomat By Niall Keogh Mercier Press, 352pp. €20