An independent Ireland would see its own independence in jeopardy the moment it saw the independence of Britain seriously threatened. Mutual self-interest would make the peoples of these two islands, if both independent, the closest possible allies in a moment of real national danger to either.

Partition is after all only an old fortress of crumbled masonry - held together with the plaster of fiction.

It is the duty of our men to enroll themselves in the national services. We need all our manpower for defence. For the military and... we need a quarter of a million men.

Mr. Churchill is proud of Britain's stand alone, after France had fallen and before America entered the War.

For Irishmen, there is no football game to match rugby and if all our young men played rugby not only would we beat England and Wales but France and the whole lot of them put together.

Of course I wrote most of the Constitution myself. I remember hesitating for a long time over the US presidential system. But it wouldn't have done - we were too trained in English democracy to sit down under a dictatorship which is what the American system really is.

We are fully aware that, in a world at war, each set of belligerents is over ready to regard those who are not with them as against them; but the course we have followed is a just course.