Ireland’s membership of the League of Nations: the Athlone view

by John Gibney

The League of Nations was the international political body established by the Paris peace conference in direct response to the First World War. Based in Geneva, it had been inspired by British and American views of a new international order (especially those of US president Woodrow Wilson), in which future wars could be avoided by an unprecedented form of multinational co-operation. The first Dáíl Éireann had unsuccessfully sought admission to the emerging League in its quest for Irish independence to be recognised internationally, and in April 1923 the newly established Irish Free State applied to join, finally being admitted as a member the following September. In the intervening months there was a good deal of debate in Irish official circles about what this might mean in practice, and how it might best be approached, and one of the most notable of such commentaries emanated from Athlone.

The author was Major-General Seán Mac Eoin, the former Longford IRA commander who, having supported the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, was now the General Officer Commanding the National Army’s Athlone Command. On July 19, 1923, from Athlone (now Custume) Barracks, he wrote a lengthy missive on the implications of League membership to W.T. Cosgrave, the President of the Executive Council, and the premier of the state that had now applied to join the League.

Mac Eoin’s contribution arose from a conversation the two men had a few days earlier. It was unusual for such advice to come from a military, rather than a political or diplomatic figure, but it also stood out due to the thoroughness with which he approached the subject.

One of the key reasons that the Irish Free State wanted to join the League of Nations was to assert its new-found independence from Britain, even as it formally remained a dominion within the British Empire.

Mac Eoin was sharply attuned to this. He insisted that any Irish delegation to the League be well staffed and equipped. They should “take with them copies of the [Anglo-Irish] Treaty, [the] Constitution, [and] Acts by both Parliaments ratifying the Treaty. These should be brought first for registry in the League of Nations, and secondly [copies] to be given to each Delegate from each Country. There are 52 Countries represented at the League of Nations, so for this purpose 100 copies would at least be necessary. This is part propaganda and to inform the Nations of the World as to what actually our Status amongst the Nations of the World really is”.

Equally, Michael MacWhite, the Cork-born former French legionnaire who was the Irish Free State’s representative in Geneva, should ‘retain Hotel accommodation for the Delegates in Geneva, as if we let it go any longer it will be very difficult to get [a] place, and you must have a decent place. When admission is gained to the League of Nations our first speech must be in Irish, of which you will have two translations, one in English and one in French.

It would be wise that the second speech be in French and the third in English, so as to show the world, that we are Statesmen equal to any Nation of the World’. It was crucial that Ireland make it clear that it was not merely an adjunct to the United Kingdom. MacWhite had sought to make this clear in Geneva, but Mac Eoin advised concrete measures to back this up: “It is also suggested that we immediately start to ratify separately some of the Treaties between the different groups of Nations for instance Opium Treaty for the prevention of Drug traffic, the White Slave Traffic, and all these various Treaties that are registered between the different groups of Nations, of which each Nation must subscribe independently. It seems at the moment that we are taking no steps in the matter’. Such Irish ratifications, he observed, ‘would have a widespread effect and would place us high in the limelight as an Independent Nation”.

The actions of other dominions, especially Canada, offered precedents in this regard, and Mac Eoin suggested to Cosgrave that a close watch be kept on how they conducted themselves at the League, the better to ensure, he insisted, “that Ireland gets every inch and ounce of freedom out of the Treaty that can be got out of it…I know well that it is only necessary to draw your attention to these matters to have them made right”.

Mac Eoin was not the only person in Athlone to be devoting time to such matters. Between April and September 1923, the Irish Free State’s prospective and actual membership of the League featured regularly in the pages of the Westmeath Independent, back in business since February 1922 following the destruction of its offices in a British reprisal in November 1920. When the Irish Free State formally joined the League of Nations in September 1923, the Independent nailed its colours to the mast in fulsome style.

On September 15, it stated that ‘Ireland has taken her place amongst the nations. At noon on Monday the event – the most notable and significant in the chequered history of our country took place in the beautiful Swiss city, Geneva. It is truly a remarkable achievement and a great victory. President Cosgrave, and those of his colleagues who laboured towards that end deserve the everlasting praise of the Irish people. They have elevated our country to a pinnacle of greatness and placed the Crown on the work begin by Griffith and Collins”.

A week later the euphoria had receded and it was back to business. On September 22 the Independent approvingly noted that the registering of the Anglo-Irish Treaty with the League as an international agreement was a way of locking down the ‘Boundary Question’, by ensuring that it would be impossible for the British to ‘renounce their obligations under the Treaty’.

As Mac Eoin had noted in his letter to Cosgrave, “we must under no circumstance let England or the Northern Government round off any of the corners [of the Treaty], but that instead that we push them out and take the full benefit of it including the Boundary Commission of which England is a party to and must uphold and interpret in the spirit in which the Treaty was written”.

In that, both Mac Eoin and his local paper were essentially in agreement. Such commentaries about Ireland’s relationship to the new League of Nations encapsulate both a recognition of both its symbolic importance and practical potential, of a desire to make good the political outcomes of the Irish revolution through international recognition, and to tidy up some of its loose ends through tackling partition. They point towards the next steps that might be taken into an uncertain future, after a decade of conflict and upheaval.

John Gibney is Assistant Editor with the Royal Irish Academy’s Documents on Irish Foreign Policy programme. A longer version of this article was published on Westmeath County Council’s Decade of Centenaries blog: https://www.westmeathcoco.ie/en/ourservices/planning/conservationheritage/decadeofcentenariesblog/.