Sir, In this peace loving neutral country people of all kinds, black, white, brown and yellow, business people, research workers, seafarers, students, tourists, all are welcome, and, we believe, always will be.
Nevertheless, we cannot help feeling it hardly tactful of the government of the United States, where so many Irish people have friends and relatives, to send to our country, when it is about to undertake a spell of serious responsibility as presidential nation in the European Union, a gigantic warship, the cost of construction and operation of which could have built many colleges, schools, clinics and hospitals in places in dire need of them. It would be a pity if people here began thinking that the appearance of a US aircraft carrier off Dublin had some relationship with the reported pressure recently by the German Chancellor on our government to renounce our well tried policy of military neutrality and join an ostensibly defensive military alliance depending finally on willingness to use nuclear weapons.
Of course the seafarers of the USS John F. Kennedy will be welcome ashore here, and we hope they will go away with good memories of Irish hospitality, and of the peaceful but lively life of a community that believes in friendship with all nations and hostility to none.
Hoping that the next time the US government wants to impress the Irish people, and underline its policy of trying to draw together the divided people of the northern part of this island, it will think of sending over one of its greatest merchant vessels with an exhibition aboard of all the contributions the United States has made to make the world a better one to live in. Yours, etc., IRELAND, President, Irish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Bellevtie Park, St Luke's, Cork.