Sir, - Kevin Myers's clever reference to Herr Hempel (An Irishman's Diary, April 16th) gives a false, unfair description of Ireland's attitude to wartime neutrality. There was no solicitude for Mr Stuart: the reverse; ask him. The German minister was politely but firmly kept in his place. A "certain consideration" was reserved for Britain. It manifested itself in availability of manpower for factories and front line; weather, intelligence, an air corridor. Churlishness in acknowledging this does not negate it.
It is true that de Valera resorted to theatre in proffering condolences on Hitler's death and probably merited the sobriquet "Casiabianca of the Protocol". He played foreign policy to the domestic gallery with one eye on the polling booth.
Anyway the whole charade fell flat. The estimable late Dr Michael Rynne told me that the exercise was a complete fiasco, an anti-climax. Dr Hempel was distraught, inconsolably wringing his hands in despair. As far as I can make out the call never got to the point of formally extending condolences. There was certainly none of the chummy all-pals-together which Kevin Myers entertainingly and imaginatively depicts: no chatty tinkling of teacups.
Before I submitted my TCD thesis "Herr Hempel at the German Legation (1937-45)", Frau Eva Hempel, the minister's young and beautiful wife, went through it with me, line by line. She dissented from the hand-wringing description: he had eczema in his hands, she said, and was scratching them.
Part of de Valera's motivation may have been a wish to make a retaliatory gesture to the ineffable American minister, David Gray. He found Hempel to be invariably correct, but like most Germans of the time, unbearable in 1940. The people will probably look into their own hearts for future ownership of foreign policy. It is too serious a business to be left in the hands or "hearts" of politicians and academics. - Yours, etc., J. P. Duggan,
Cedarmount Road, Mount Merrion, Co Dublin.