Territory is often described as the body of the national organism and the language as its soul. In the ideology of almost every nation, therefore, its historical territory is looked upon almost as a living personality which cannot be partitioned without destroying it altogether.

During the Treaty debates, one night, at the close of the day's proceedings I walked back with Michael Collins and Sean O'Muirthile and Joseph McGrath to where, each night, he and his friends compared notes about the day's debate and considered whether anything could be done to convince waverers. After a while everybody departed save myself and O'Muirthile and Collins. I passed the remark: ‘it's an astonishing thing to me that in the attack on the Treaty practically nothing is said about Partition which is the one real blot on it.’ O'Muirthile looked up in surprise, and said: ‘Before they signed, Griffi th and Collins got a personal undertaking from Smith and Churchill that if Ulster opted out they would get only four counties and that they make a four-county government impossible.’ I looked up at Collins, and he grinned and said: ‘That's right.’

There was no reason why this should have been invented for my benefi t, I had declared for the Treaty on the morning of its announcement, and I had never wavered. Nor was I criticising the Treaty, but wondering why the opposition neglected what seemed to me their most telling point.