Sir - On October 29th you published a letter from Col J.P. Duggan under the above heading. This letter, due to a misprint (noted and corrected in The Irish Times of October 3rd), presented a very erroneous impression of my late father Dr Michael Rynne's attitude to Ireland's neutrality in the 1939-45 World War.
The Rynne family, and anyone who knew my father well, have always been fully cognisant of the fact that he was absolutely and unshakeably in favour of Ireland's neutrality. Furthermore, thanks to his post at the time as legal adviser (not "legal officer") in the Department of External Affairs, he played a major part in realising and maintaining our neutrality throughout the war. The misprint of "condemning the neutrality of Ireland" instead of "concerning the neutrality of Ireland" therefore caused much misunderstanding and heart searching among our family.
Indeed, in our father's doctorate, Die Volkerrechtliche Stellung Irlands, published in Munich in 1930, he prophesied inter alia that Ireland would shortly get back the ports and that if there were to be another major world war, Ireland would declare for neutrality (I have, regrettably, not read the book, being neither sufficiently fluent in German nor an international nor constitutional lawyer, but he always told us this).
The first prophecy was realised in 1938, and we used always to joke with him that the reason he worked so hard to keep us neutral during the war was to bring the second prophecy to fruition! Regarding the "missing link", a quick search through his books and papers has so far failed to produce any positive result. - Yours, etc.,
Athenry,
Co Galway.