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.

The part which American friendship played in helping us to win the freedom we enjoy in this part of Ireland has been gratefully recognized and acknowledged by our people.

If war comes upon us, it will come as a thief in the night

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

God has been pleased to save us during the years of war that have already passed. We pray that He may be pleased to save us to the end. But we must do our part.

We hope that the plain people - the labourers and small farmers - will take this opportunity of coming together and working out the National programme.

Could he not find in his heart the generosity to acknowledge that there is a small nation that stood alone not for one year or two, but for several hundred years against aggression; that endured spoliations, famines, massacres in endless succession; that was clubbed many times into insensibility, but that each time on returning [to] consciousness took up the fight anew; a small nation that could never be got to accept defeat and has never surrendered her soul?