This page has already been transcribed. You can find new pages to transcribe here.

Transcription

[Page 369]

5.

you in this letter. Later on in the morning Judge Heydon rang up, perfectly furious at what he considered to be an insult to me, but I told him I took it as one of the greatest compliments ever paid me, & that O'Reilly had done for me what I couldn't do for myself. He had demonstrated that there was an impassable gulf between him and his Sinn Fein friends on the one side, & me on the other, & he had done this in the most melodramatic way he could devise. He thought that when the Irishmen were baulked of their usual patriotic speeches & found out the reason why, they would hoot my name to the echo. But the whole plan went wrong, & Archbishop Kelly ignored his absence, & got up & delivered an impromptu speech of his own, & never even mentioned O'Reilly's name or the reason for his asbence.

The next day the Archbishop met John Hughes at the opening of a church at Bondi, & expressed his regret at the insult offered to me by O'Reilly, & added that as he himself was President of the Committee he could only look on O'Reilly's action as an insult to him also. When the two Catholic papers were published a few days later there was not the slightest reference to the episode, nor was O'Reilly's name mentioned, & this was by the Archbishop's express wish, so that the whole grand plot missed fire lamentably, & O'Reilly instead of being a Sinn Fein hero of the moment is rather "in the soup".

 

Current Status: 
Completed