A Spectator's Notebook N EXT week Mr. de Valera will be
in London. The fact may or may not be of political significance. The reason for the visit is that the Irish President will be on his way to Rome. The potential importance of it lies in the personal contacts for which it will give opportunity. On the whole I look for more contacts on the return journey than the outward. For it is quite on the cards that by the time he gets back to these shores Mr. de Valera will have concluded a concordat with the Vatican. That, I am given to understand, is the object of his journey, and if it were achieved it would undoubtedly strengthen both his own position and his Government's. Relations with the Holy See hitherto have been by no means cordial, for the Pope has made no secret of his disapproval of the I.R.A. and its methods. But it is significant in that connexion that Mr. de Valera has been insisting recently that there is no longer any excuse for -armed action of any kind in Ireland. Whatever happens in Rome there is just a bare chance of something happening in London if British Ministers are prepared to establish contact and explore the situation once more —though a concordat between Mr. de Valera and, say, Lord Hailsham, will take a great deal more negotiating than a concordat between Mr. de Valera and the Pope.
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