Sir, - The debate on the future of the EU sparked by the recent comments of Ms Mary Harney and Ms Sile de Valera bring to my memory an exchange of views on the subject between the retired French president, Charles de Gaulle, and the Irish president, Eamon de Valera, during the former's private visit to Ireland in May and June 1969.
In my book De Gaulle and Ireland, published in 1991 by the Institute of Public Administration, I quoted the dialogue of the two statesmen as it was disclosed to me, shortly afterwards, by the late Ambassador Emmanuel d'Harcourt: "The Irish president recalled that when he had been in America in the 1920s, he had made a statement that he afterwards regretted. He had declared then that a United States of Europe should be constituted on the lines of the United States of America. Back in Ireland during the last days of the Anglo-Irish war of independence, he had come to realise his error. An individual cannot renounce his personality. It is the same for other fundamental units of human society, the family and the nation."
Eamon de Valera made a pause and then added: "The European nations are too old; they have too deeply ingrained a personality to be capable of dissolving one day into a vaster European whole."
"It is exactly what I think", said General de Gaulle, approvingly.
Plus ca change et plus ca recommence, as we say in this country! - Yours, etc.,
Pierre Joannon, Chairman, Ireland Fund De France, Antibes, France.