Should Ireland apply to join the League of Nations?
Seanad discussion adjourned to allow more information to be presented
22 March 1923, Dublin - The question of Ireland’s possible membership of the League of Nations was discussed yesterday in Seanad Éireann.
It followed the presentation of a motion to the Upper Chamber from Mr. J.J. Douglas urging the House to record its support for membership on the grounds that Ireland’s ‘best interests...will be served by co-operation with the League of Nations’ and urging the Executive Council of the Free State to apply for membership ‘at the earliest convenient opportunity.’
Senator Douglas, an Independent member of the Seanad, explained that his motion was not intended to be in any way critical of the government, but was rather intended to ‘create a certain amount of public interest in the League of Nations’ and excite interest in the question of Irish membership.’
Senator Douglas was nevertheless clear as to the reason why he considered Ireland’s application for membership to be appropriate. It would, he said, be ‘a public admission and recognition by the world of our independent national status.’ Furthermore, membership itself would help ‘safeguard the position which we have achieved and hope to hold.’
Continuing, Senator noted that some years ago Irish leaders had failed to secure recognition from the League but now was presented with an opportunity that would allow Ireland membership, not as an inferior, but on exactly the same terms and conditions and such powers as Holland, Spain and others.
The League to Enforce Peace published this full-page promotion in The New York Times on Christmas Day 1918 (Image: The New York Times, 1918)
The motion put forward by Douglas caught many of his fellow Senators by surprise to the extent that they called for an adjournment of the debate. Mr. Thomas Westropp Bennett asked that the matter be deferred for a month as he hadn’t got any papers from the House in six weeks, a rebuttal to the Cathaoirleach who said that a notice concerning the agenda had been sent out six days previously.
Others too wanted answers to questions as to the costs of joining the League of Nations, among them the poet Senator William Butler Yeats.
Senator Patrick W. Kenny also raised the matter of the expense of joining, but added that he felt that consideration of the issue be postponed until the country had returned to a more settled state. According to Mr. Kenny, pressing the matter now might ‘militate against our chance of admission...and it would certainly be a very great blow to our prestige if we were refused admission.’
By agreement of the Seanad, it was decided to adjourn the debate - not the motion - until after the Easter Recess.
[Editor's note: This is an article from Century Ireland, a fortnightly online newspaper, written from the perspective of a journalist 100 years ago, based on news reports of the time.]
