Sir, - In his very interesting article (Weekend, October 17th) on the recently published Documents on Irish Foreign Policy, 1919-1922, Prof Tom Garvin says: "It contains many an eye-opener. It seems clear ... that [Michael] Collins was satisfied that two of the six partitioned counties would revert to the South in the event of the North seceding from the original, national 32county Free State".
He goes on: "Why he thought this to be so is unclear - perhaps it was wishful thinking, or perhaps the general obsession with the question of sovereignty and the Oath clouded his mind. Perhaps it was simple exhaustion."
The answer is simpler and more straightforward. Collins held this view because, during the Treaty negotiations, it was urged upon him and Griffith by Lloyd George, Churchill and Birkenhead (T. M. Healy being an intermediary at one stage), as an inevitability and as something they would support.
This point, profoundly important in shaping subsequent attitudes (not least that of the IRB), together with other equally important if less well-known aspects of the period 1900-1923, are elaborated in some detail in my recently published narrative history of the period, Birth of a Republic, now available in bookshops. - Yours, etc., Eoin Neeson,
Blackrock,
Co Dublin.