San Francisco is known for various colourful reasons. It was a centre of world concern around this time of year in May, 1945, as the war in Europe drew to its close with the suicide of Hitler, the killing and public displaying of Mussolini's body, the opening of the concentration camps and the surrender of the German armies. But San Francisco, in that year, was already the setting for the conference that was to bring about the emergence of the United Nations.
Ale letters from an Irishman who was in the city at the time, give an interesting sidelight on a postscript to the war's ending the public debate, one speech on each side, between Winston Churchill and Eamon de Valera. Churchill, writes our Irish correspondent, "paid an inescapable and proper tribute to the scores of thousands of Irishmen who have been fighting, but an attack on the neutrality position, especially with regard to the ports and reference to de Valera both frivolous and bitter. He certainly did not say all that could be said, and I felt that he might have been a little more statesmanlike with an eye to the future".
There was, he reports, an interesting reaction among the Irish in the city who had been abusing and damning de Valera for his visit of condolence to the German legation after Hitler's suicide. Some of these, he knew, had been Dev supporters. But "when Churchill seemed to suggest that an attack on Ireland would have been justified there was a widespread reaction against this." Dev's speech, our correspondent writes (good summaries in some papers) "went down well as more dignified than Churchill's". England had indeed stood alone against aggression for a year or two, but Ireland had fought alone for a much longer time. Dev "paid a great tribute and this was clever and good statesmanship to Churchill in resisting the temptation to apply force against Ireland". In doing so, "Mr Churchill advanced the cause of morality among nations and took one of the most important initial steps in the establishment of a basis for international peace. As far as England and Ireland are concerned, it may perhaps mark a fresh beginning". And Dev did say that allowances should be made for Churchill in the first exuberance of victory.
Maybe some relevance to America, too, wrote the correspondent, "a guiding line to people here who may in a short time be facing a violent controvers on America's participation in the coming World Peace" For America had had convulsion about the League of Nations proposed by their President but America never joined it.