We do an overview here, based on the underlying material which is accessible in the decade modules of this thread.

The Albert Kahn Foundation Background

The Vice-Chancellors of all Universities in the UK, including the NUI and QUB and TCD, had the right to nominate candidates for the Fellowship. The 1911 Fellows appointed included Ivor Back; I have a copy of the Ivor Back Report (1911-12); it is an ill-structured chatty memoir, without table of contents or index, in the tradition of the English 'grand tour' traveller. I conjecture that the Albert Kahn Trustees would not have been pleased with it, and wanted to upgrade the standard.

The established emphasis on politics, economics and geography continued in 1912, when there were 10 candidates, including HAL Fisher, whom JJ knew in Oxford. I conjecture that it could have been Fisher who gave to JJ the idea that that he apply, though he subsequently attributed this to Mahaffey in TCD. The successful candidates in 1912 included GL Dickenson (classics, history, political science); I have also the Dickenson Report, dated October 1913. This is more scholarly in structure, with sections devoted to India, China and Japan, in the form of essays, in which he attempts to bring out what he sees as essential features in the culture.

In 1913 we have Douglas Knopp from Sheffield, and in 1914 Joseph Johnston, AJ Ogilvie and WT Layton. The latter two however joined up for the war. There is a long gap then until 1920, when we get John Ewing from Edinburgh and Eileen Power from Cambridge, and then in 1922 Leonard Halford and Dudley Baxton from Oxford. The record then ceases.

There are some further insights in the Meiers correspondence, which would appear to have commenced in or around 1907; it indicated that Albert Kahn had been running Fellowships along these lines in France, and aspired to set up centres in the US, Japan and Germany as well as in the UK. There had been 33 awards in France, which included Charles Garnier who went on to become the Executive Secretary of the Foundation in Paris. There is also a reference to five in Japan and two in Germany.

I have an example of one of the earlier Reports, in fact the first, published in 1914, but relating to 1909-10, by Tongo Takabe, Professor of Sociology at the Imperial College in Tokyo. This was published in French by F Rieder, rue de Vaugirard, Paris. It gives a page or two to most European countries, as seen through Japanese eyes. This and the two other Reports mentioned above were in JJ's possession, and I suspect he must have got hold of them in order to make his own proposal having seen the background.

I also have lists of the members of the Societé Autour du Monde for 1914, 1922 and 1931. The 1914 list while being mostly French has a strong German component, and includes members from Russia, the US and Japan. Post-war the German component vanishes. There is a thesis for someone in the elucidation of the significance of the details of this list, but the basic message is that pre-1914 it was the makings of a real international network, while after the war its scope and influence declined, though clearly Garnier did his best to keep alive the liberal-democratic tradition, with his support of Scottish and Irish national aspirations.

It would appear that Albert Kahn was consciously setting up to establish a network of people who he hoped would become influential in preventing war, and his method was to enable them to see how the world lived, learn from first-hand experience, and hopefully to set up correspondence networks.

JJ's World Tour (the Albert Kahn Travelling Fellowship)

JJ had originally intended to travel through France, Germany, Austria and Turkey before going on to India. He had intended to take my mother with him; it had been planned as a sort of 'working honeymoon'. They landed in France, and then the war broke out, and they had to return. In the end JJ and my mother departed for India on November 21 1914, arriving in Bombay on December 19. My mother then went on separately(2) to Australia, to visit her mother's sister and aunt, with the intention of meeting up again with my father in Java, and going on to China, Japan, and back across the US. My father had therefore the chance to spend time in India in 'investigative journalist' mode rather than in tourist mode, and this adds depth to the Indian section of the Report.

In his introduction he declared that it had been written in 1916, and that his thinking had evolved considerably since then. Since it did not in the end get published until 1921, he doubted if it still possessed interest, due to the many problems with which the world was then confronted, consequent on the war. He indicated in footnotes areas where his opinions had radically altered.

(He was however able to use it in 1922 to persuade the Manchester Guardian to publish a series of articles of his on India, and this established his credibility as an investigative journalist to the extent that he was asked to do a similar series on Ireland in April of 1923, at the tail-end of the Civil War(3).)

The Indian section of the report contained the following sections, for each of which I give a brief outline:

• India - Initial General Impressions: JJ sought in vain in Indian history evidence for the type of political community with which we are familiar in Europe. The concept of family and kinship had not begun to be transcended by those of the citizen and the nation-state. An important obstacle to this was the caste system, which existed not only among the Hindus but also among the Muslims. He remarked acidly that among Europeans in India the caste system also de facto existed; they were far from giving a good examplar for the principle of egalitarian citizenship, to judge from the unwritten rules governing access to the 'station club'.

• Spiritual Contrast between India and the West: ...the Hindu and Muslim religions were perhaps key factors. Islam JJ identified as standing in the same relation to Judaism as does Christianity, but Islam in India he found heavily influenced by the Hindu majority environment. Hindus were born not made; Hinduism did not claim universal status. There was an underlying monotheistic concept in the form of the impersonal all-pervading Brahma, of which the world as a whole as a material manifestation. JJ tentatively developed the parallel with the Christian concept of the Holy Spirit, and linked this with experience of the Christian missions. On the negative side however there was the doctrine of the Karma, which linked actions with the fortunes of the agent not only in the current life, but also in subsequent lives, through the process of transmigration. Thus one's present misfortunes being a consequence of bad actions in a previous existence tend to encourage fatalism and submission. This in turn led to an aspiration to escape from the painful necessity of living for ever, and this is achievable by giving up actions and becoming an ascetic. This led to the statistic that in 1901 there were 5.2M religious beggars in India. He touched on Buddhism, the Upanishads and their interpreter Sarkaracharya, of the 9th century AD, and his Path of Wisdom, leading ultimately to the identity of the liberated soul with Brahma. In this context he popularised the doctrine of Maya or illusion. This highly philosophical religion is impossible to follow in detail except for a select few, but for purposes of popularising the concepts among the unlettered, Brahma was 'considered to have become incarnate in the god Krishna, who might be represented in the form of an idol and approached with prayer and sacrifice by even the humblest and most ignorant'.

  
  

• Popular Hinduism: JJ went into the origins, dynamics and current statistics of the caste system. It is conjectured that it originated in the need of the Aryan invaders to differentiate themselves from their darker predecessors. There were originally four castes: Brahmans (priests), Kshatria (warriors), Vaisya (artisans) and Sudras (menials). These subdivided, and in 1901 there were 2358 distinct castes distributed among 43 racial or tribal groups, 1800 of these subdivisions being Brahmans. The complexity of the religious concepts imposes the need for a numerous and skilled priesthood. Sometime movements to eradicate the caste system emerge, but these simply tend to become new castes. It matters little what one believes, as long as one obeys the ceremonial procedures appropriate to one's caste.

• Education: this question had first posed itself 100 years previously, in the form, should education be Oriental or Western? The first few existing colleges taught Oriental knowledge, but then Lord Macaulay in 1835 decreed that their 'absurd science, metaphysics, physics and theology' should be abandoned, that education should be Western, and through English (4). This restricted education to the upper castes. There was however resistance to education together of Hindus of different castes, and indeed Hindus with Muslims; in the latter case the opposition came primarily from the Muslim side, as the Hindus would accept a purely secular form of education. Under the purdah girls disappeared out of the system at age 10, when they were married off.

• Administrative Machinery: there was no uniform system under the Indian Government, which was led centrally by the 'Governor-General in Council'. This included a few token Indians, but had a European majority. Bombay, Madras and Bengal had Governors with Executive Councils. The various Provinces had Legislative Councils with elected Indian majorities. Their administrative systems were however dependent on the dates on which they had been annexed. The fact that the police came directly under the Magistrate suggested to JJ that executive and judicial functions were somewhat unhealthily intertwined. The qualities expected of the District Magistrate included at least familiarity with, or even mastery of: law, economics, engineering, agriculture, archaeology, ethnology, sanitation, estate management, excise, police and local administration, supported by psychology and philosophy. JJ goes through a typical day in the life of such a paragon, presumably his elder brother, and it is possible to detect constraints on his objectivity, though there is perhaps a hint of 'tongue in cheek'.

• Bureaucracy: this section is a sort of an aside, in which JJ compared actually existing bureaucracy on the British-Indian model with the then current situation in Ireland, unfavourably to the latter. In the Indian situation the impersonal and mechanistic aspect of bureaucracy, to which the central government aspires, was moderated by the existence of real power at District level, operated by real people who had to live there. A District Magistrate-Collector on leave in England encountered through his GP a local health-care problem, involving an epidemic; local hospital resources were idle but could not be obtained without recourse to London; our Indian Civil Service friend (probably James or John) would have solved the analogous problem in India, had it occurred in his District, at the stroke of a pen.

• The Work of the District Magistrate: JJ had some critical words to say about the Indian legal profession, which tended to be parasitical on the economic life of the people, and to seek to prolong and complicate disputes, viewing the bankrupting of their clients with unconcern. He gave some examples which suggested that legal practice in India was significantly dirtier than in Ireland. The District Magistrate went on tour with a tent, and heard cases at a portable table. While on tour in this mode, the Magistrate picked up diverse bits of local knowledge; he was the government, accessible, and with a human face. This aspect of the government of India JJ identified as a desirable norm, absent in the UK itself, as instanced by the scandal of the starving soldiers' wives during the War; they were advised to write to or call at the War Office for their separation allowances.

• The Joint Magistrate (who is an Indian civilian): the Service was in process of apprenticing Indian assistants, and JJ sat in on one such court. One matter dealt with was the renewal of gun-licences, a process involving verification of a marking on each weapon. This process was necessary for Indians but not for Europeans; the latter could obtain and carry firearms without any formality. This opened up the possibility of Indians becoming armed unofficially through Europeans of like mind for revolutionary purposes. JJ remarks on the need to make the licencing system universal.

• The Sub-Division: I quote: '..it is even said that a man has more power for good or evil as Sub-Divisional Officer (SDO) than he is ever likely to obtain again unless he becomes Lieutenant-Governor..'. These were Indians or Eurasians of the 'Provincial' service, usually in their 20s or 30s; it was regarded as a training-ground for native recruitment to the Civil Service. One such had administered a major flood-control project on the Ganges, which JJ had compared to Irish experience of attempting to get things done with the Shannon or the Bann by remote and conflicting Dublin departments. JJ's support for strong local authority was reinforced by this Indian, and by subsequent French, experience. JJ went on to comment on problems connected with payment of rent in kind to landlords, and in this sort of situation the SDO tended to side with the landlords. We have here a sort of re-enactment of the scene in 19th century Ireland, with which JJ identified.

• Judicial Procedure and the Law of Evidence: JJ gave some detailed accounts of cases where the application of the English laws of evidence constituted positive barriers to justice being done. He suggested that Japanese procedures might have been more appropriate, and stressed the importance of people in the judiciary having executive experience.

• Agricultural Conditions and Agricultural Credit: JJ went into the historical background of land tenure and tax collection in India. Under the Moguls tax had been a proportion of harvest, and was farmed out to collectors, who took a cut. The British substituted a fixed rate per unit area, and recognised the Mogul tax-farmers or Zamindars as a sort of embryonic squirearchy. This made the villages more financially vulnerable in times of drought or flood. Under the Moguls the tax-farmers were supposed to keep back a 10% commission. Under the British this situation over time became reversed, and in effect a wealthy land-owning class was created. The government in the end had to intervene in the interests of the tenants, under the Bengal Tenancy Acts. This however had the effect of passing control from the landlords to the moneylenders, a consequence of the undermining of the village community by the process of encouraging individual peasant proprietorship. Credit had been handled at village level via the village bania who originally acted as a sort of community banker, without the bad odour associated with gombeenism. Once land-ownership at the individual level came in, credit became based on land as security, and to be in the form of a legal contract between individuals rather than a customary arrangement under common supervision. The bania became the usurer, who gained land by dispossession of its occupiers, who were unable to pay back loans under usurious interest, often as high as 75%. 'The village community was thus destroyed, and a regime of economic individualism was entrenched behind a barrier of law.'

• The Co-operative Movement: this section takes up 17 pages and reflects JJ's enthusiasm for this bottom-up democratic approach to economic development. The movement went back to 1892, when the Madras government sent Sir Frederick Nicholson on a roving commission to Europe to study how the co-operative movement addressed the question of agricultural indebtedness. In this context he encountered Sir Horace Plunkett and the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society (IAOS), as well as the Raffeisen movement. It was soon realised that special legislation would be necessary. The first Co-operative Credit Societies Act was passed in 1904 when Lord Curzon was Viceroy, and JJ regarded this as being to his credit, however much he was execrated by articulate nationalist India. A further Act in 1912 provided for the appointment of a Registrar of Co-operative Societies by local government, and went further than the 1896 UK Friendly Societies Act, by providing for a propagandist and organising role for the Registrar.

  In his subsequent 1920 note JJ referenced a book by HW Wolff on 'Co-operation in India' and highlighted the process of political citizenship training in the co-operative movement, leading to the possibility of enhanced local government.

  He contrasted the India situation with that in Ireland, where representative local democracy had fallen under the influence of gombeen-politicians, and co-operative initiatives tended to be attacked as conspiracies against trade. The State in India he regarded as a relatively benevolent bureaucracy, in a position to act progressively without gombeen influence. I quote: '..Imagine a Parliament consisting of John Dillons, Lord Clanrickardes, and Sir Edward Carsons, and you will have a faint idea of what an elected Indian political assembly would be like. A proposal to establish co-operative societies for the benefit of rural India would the strangled at birth by a Parliament thus constituted...'.

• Comparisons between India and Ireland: JJ further emphasised the mutual support between the Indian Departments of Agriculture and the Registrars as being essential to the progress of the co-operative movement, and warned against the influence of the emerging gombeen political activists. Paradoxically, though JJ is a democrat in economic matters, in matters political he was convinced that representative democracy on the British model would throw up the worst type of self-interested gombeen element: '...The machinery of representative government does not work well in Ireland, and if the Irish people were to continue electing to the Irish parliament the same type of man they have been sending to Westminster, no scheme of Home Rule would work satisfactorily..'(5).

• Labour conditions and slavery: JJ went into some detail regarding how the labour market worked in India. Enslavement for debt, under the harauri system, was prevalent in Bihar and Madras. This relationship was supported tacitly under English law of contract, and the relationship in fact became hereditary. One way of escape for such slaves was to join a gang of coolies recruited for service in the tea plantations of Assam or Ceylon. This however was to suffer a similar fate. Recruits for coolie labour on these estates seldom if ever returned to their villages; it was a life-sentence.

• Christian Missionary Effort: the four million or so Indian Christians tended, according to JJ, to belong predominantly to the lower end of the social spectrum, and this led to prejudice against them on the part of the upper-crust Hindus, especially the Brahmans. There had been up to the middle of the 19th century some recruitment from members of the educated classes into Christianity, but this trend had been diverted by the Brahmo Samaj movement, which was a reformed religion rooted in Hindu philosophy, but incorporating many Christian concepts.

• Religious Movements other than Hindu: expanding on the philosophy of the Brahmo Samaj, JJ identified this as a progressive force, with its members prominent in social reform movements against caste, child marriage, right of widows to re-marry etc. There was also the Prarthana Samaj in Bombay, for which the social reform and nation-building aspects had priority. This movement attempted to show that the current abuses were not fundamental to the Scriptures, constituting a relatively recent corrupt imposition. There was also a movement called the Arya Samaj was founded in 1875 by one Swami Dayananda Saraswati, against Hindu idolatry and back to Vedas monotheism. These ideas were further developed by Pandit Guru Datta, who was familiar with Western philosophy as well as Eastern. Despite a dogmatic appearance, JJ regarded the Aryans as a liberalising influence, and devoted 8 pages to them. Although it started in Bombay, its current strength was in the Pubjab, whose people JJ saw as somewhat similar to those of Ulster; he attributed the relative success of the co-operative movement in the Punjab to the character of the people there. The Aryan approach to the caste problem was similar to that of the Prarthana Samaj; in other words, they sought to discredit it as a modern overlay which corrupts the pure Vedas. They organised educational missions in the villages. They claimed to be 'catholic' in the sense that they believed their message was not only for the Hindu but for Islam, the Sikh, for India as a whole, and indeed for the world. They had entered into competition with the Christians for the support of the 'depressed classes'. Their education policy was to use the vernacular, and to teach Western science through it, as part of a total curriculum. Although nominally non-political, the Aryan movement appeared to constitute a force supportive of the Indian National Congress. JJ regarded the Aryan movement as relating to Congress as the Gaelic League related to the Irish Parliamentary Party.

• The Caste question: JJ picked up on the aftermath of a conference held in 1912 by an organisation known as the Aryan Brotherhood, which organised provocatively a multi-caste dinner in Bombay, including 'untouchables'. This led to much newspaper agitation, as a result of which some participants were 'outcasted', including one educated Gujarati, whom JJ quoted at length: '...castes are neither trade guilds or associations...they are simply based on birth....castes have become water-tight compartments disintegrating society into irreconcilable factions...the sole function of caste is to limit the area of dining and marrying relations...caste is not able to guide the social, economic, moral or religious live of its members... caste has been broken and is being broken on many sides, though it still has retained its outer shape.'

• The Indian National Congress: JJ was critical of the policies of this body, particularly as regards its explicit inability to deal with problems of social reform, and as regards its failure to address the false educational policies which have evolved under the British, which have in fact formed the Indian political class in the image of their overlords. 'Measures of constructive statesmanship like the Co-operative Societies Act owe everything to the intelligence and common sense of an "autocratic and despotic administration", but little or nothing to the political advocacy of those who claim to represent intelligent and educated India.' If Congress is to be taken seriously, it needs to look into questions like the use of the courts in enforcing usurious contracts, and the 'harauri' system of slavery, as matters of pressing economic reform. Vested interests within Congress itself, as well as religious prejudices, are obstacles to this happening.

• Concluding Remarks about India: JJ advocated that the Government should '..let it be known that it is quite prepared to consider the advisability of gradually resigning its functions when it is no longer in the best interests of India to retain them....it should realise to the full the enormous strength of its own moral position under present circumstances..'. (JJ qualified this position by saying in his 1920 footnote that 'this was written prior to the Amritsar episode'. He went on to advocate that healthy local government should be built up on the foundation of the emerging co-operative movement, rather than on the basis of artificial 'electoral constituencies'. 'Representative bodies composed largely of members elected by co-operative federations might, perhaps, be trusted with legislative power...'. He concluded the India part of the Report with a statement that he has aimed to arouse curiosity rather than to satisfy it.

Post-Tour Contact up to 1920

1. The role of the Albert Kahn Foundation in enabling JJ to gain access to the Prefets.

2. The superiority of the French democratic republican State over the English Crown in organising in the common interest at local level.

3. The organised approach to the mechanisation of agriculture using existing local farmers' co-operatives; the superiority of American machinery.

4. The role of the prefet as co-ordinator at local level of all State agencies; JJ takes the opportunity to develop a critique of local administration in Ireland and the UK.

JJ picked up much printed background material and this he deposited in the Co-operative Reference Library, 84 Merrion Square (now known as Plunkett House, the headquarters of the Irish Co-operative Organisation Society).

During his trip to France in 1916 JJ worked in journalistic mode, sending a report to the London Times which was printed under the header 'War Agriculture in France / The Benefits of United Action / A Lesson to British Farmers', from 'a Correspondent in France'. He also embodied his impressions of France in an imaginative series of articles in the Irish Times, signed 'Viator', entitled 'If France Ruled Ireland'(8); these appeared during September 1916.

From August 1916 JJ was in close touch with JG Douglas(9), AE and others lobbying for what subsequently became the Convention of 1917. He was continually in touch with Charles Garnier the Executive Secretary of the AKF, and it is evident from the Garnier letters in JJ's papers that he was feeding Garnier with material for propaganda in the Irish interest, the objective being to get Ireland on to the agenda of the Peace Conference. There are hints that JJ was in on the drafting of the Convention documentation.

The full analysis of the Garnier correspondence(10) must await access to the Foundation archive, which it seems has been recovered from Moscow, where it ended up after having been looted by the Nazis, and then liberated by the Russians.

Contact with JJ in the 1920s

January 21 1921: Garnier acknowledged that they had received 100 copies of JJ's Report from University College London (UCL), for distribution to members of the Cercle. He complemented JJ: '..vous nous apportez une sérieuse contribution à l'étude de l'Inde sociale et de la Chine..'.

He then went on to ask forgiveness for not having taken up JJ's offer of 'discussions amicales sur le Traité de Versailles'. This would have been at the time when the Irish independence movement was attempting to get itself on to the agenda, without success. JJ must have tried, unsuccessfully, to promote this via the Cercle.

February 25 1921: ....Garnier had found his earlier Irish experience (he had travelled widely there in the 1890s, during his period of study of Parnell and aftermath) in demand, and a series of travel articles was in process of becoming a book. He wanted to capture his experience of interacting with the 'young enthusiasts' and the poets: Yeats, Russell, JP Quinn, etc ...

June 12 1921: This letter of three pages, which occurred about 4 weeks before the Truce was declared on July 9, is almost totally dedicated to literary and academic matters: an honorary degree from TCD for the mathematician Borel (who it turns out is a member of the Cercle), the poetry of AE, which it seems has been studied in depth by Garnier's protégé Allarg. There is comparison with Shelley and Wordsworth. There is mention of a projected 'société litteraire et scientifique franco-irlandaise'.....

August 20 1921: Garnier's next letter was from Engenthal (Bas-Rhin), where presumably he is on vacation; he acknowledged JJ's 'excellent letter of Aug 7' and then plunges into his book on Ireland of 25 years previous, three years after the death of Parnell, Home Rule accepted by the Commons but rejected by the Lords. He admits to having been totally Parnellite at the time of the split, and had nothing to do with J McCarthy, Tim Healy or TP O'Connor; he never understood how they could have abandoned their Chief in England's orders. Sigerson was on the fence, and he ranked him with the 'federationists' in favour of dominion status. Had Sigerson published anything since his 1893 'Revival of Irish Poetry'? He was attached in some capacity to the Catholic University; was he Catholic himself? When was this founded?

Garnier then got into the Dail debates: 'where will it go in its intransigance?'; he regards public opinion in the Dominions as being the limiting factor. He regarded the move to bring the Dominions into the politics of the Empire as the most important event since the Armistice. It would appear that JJ's objective, as expressed in Civil War in Ulster, of all-Ireland Home Rule within the UK had evolved towards dominion status within an imperial confederation, and that Garnier had bought this idea.

Garnier went on to reflect on the importance of agriculture, and having the right agriculture-industry mix, as in France and Ireland, England having become over-industrialised, as Germany in 1914 also had become, '..et ce fut une raison de sa déraison'. He then mentions meeting Tagore who has joined the Cercle; the latter regarded Yeats and Russell as 'poètes frères'.....

January 31 1922: Garnier described his coverage of the 'congres mondial irlandais', encountering, as though in a dream, Yeats, Maud Gonne and Douglas Hyde (all of whom he had met in Ireland decades previously), and having long conversations with Miss McSwiney and de Valera, who '..'a l'air' (he puts 'seems' in quotes, as though sceptical) de saisir très vite l'importance de questions pourtant éloignées de la politique pure comme celle des rapports intellectuels directs entre nos deux pays..'.

June 8 1922: Garnier explained the arrival of a package which JJ should have received without explanation some days previous. It contained the proceedings of the meetings of a political and social studies group which met weekly, in the Cour de Cassation, under Albert Kahn auspices. This material is not commercially available, being reserved for 'centres de documentation' in educational and research centres. It seems Albert Kahn would like such a centre to be established in Trinity College, in a small reading-room, accessible to qualified researchers.

There is no reference in the TCD records of any attempt by JJ to set this up; it is probable that he felt he did not have the political clout in the TCD environment to take such an initiative. It seems subsequently he attempted to get this set up in Plunkett House.

Was there anything published about de Valera? What did JJ think of Joyce's Dubliners?

There is then a page added subsequently, in which he refers to '...les catastrophes publiques qui se prolongent de terrible manière...si difficile a expliquer...mysterieuses et lamentables...'. We are now into the civil war. He sends a copy of his Vie du Peuples article on Arthur Griffith and he wants immediately to be briefed about Michael Collins. He asks JJ has he stopped writing in journals and revues, and asks him to think of the Cercle and the AK Bulletin for his writings. He invites JJ to come in the summer to Normandy with his family and his brother. (This must have been Sam, then dying of TB, and in process of leaving his family, Alec, Tommy and Geddes, for fostering with JJ in Stillorgan).

July 3 1922: .... Garnier thanked JJ for taking up the Documentation Centre idea with the Co-operative Reference Library.

(There is no trace of this in the Plunkett Foundation record in Oxford, nor is there in the Plunkett House library. RJ Feb 2001)

Garnier empathised with JJ regarding how the civil war has interrupted JJ's 'projects de conferences' by which he must mean the Barrington Lectures. A visit to Ireland remains on the agenda.

April 6 1923: Garnier referred to a postcard from the Midi, to which JJ probably replied. He returned a document lent him by JJ which contained background material on Michael Collins. The attention of the public was now turned away from Ireland.... He then went on to describe the French political scene, which was dominated by the conservative and reactionary 'Bloc National' elected in 1919 under the threat of Bolshevism. He regards Herriot as the man of the future, and the radical-socialist bloc....

Garnier then read JJ's letter, and was moved to add on the back of the envelope, in which he acknowledges JJ's concern with the economic depression in England and Ireland, but found it surprising that JJ held France rather than Germany responsible. This is Garnier's almost chauvinistic French response to JJ's economic analysis, which is under Keynes influence; all the gold is in the US and Germany is bankrupt, thanks to the 'reparations' aspects of the Treaty of Versailles, on which France was insisting. We have here what could develop into a break between JJ and Garnier, hitherto the best of friends. We must watch this space.

June 22 1923: The storm hinted at in the previous letter blew over, as Garnier organised for JJ and family to have red carpet treatment at the Cercle, where they are soon due to arrive. Garnier planned to go to Dublin in September, thereby (he hopes) avoiding the elections.

August 31 1923: Garnier was present for the arrival of President Cosgrave, met by two government representatives and a sympathetic crowd. Cosgrave looked 'extremely young and smiling'. He went on with the 'caravane' to the Grand Hotel and had some talk with Dr Mac Neil (sic) whom he found friendly, and who undertook to facilitate him when in Dublin in September.

September 28 1923: Garnier wrote to JJ on his return to Paris after his trip to Ireland, basically to thank JJ for taking care of him when in Dublin, and for facilitating his subsequent stay in London. It would appear that JJ had arranged for him to be met at Euston by 'M Nesbitt' who had arranged a place to stay. This was the family network; Bob Nesbitt from Belfast would then have been courting my mother's younger sister Isabel. He must have been in London at the time, and JJ would have produced him for Garnier, to help him get a feel for the Belfast Protestant world-view.

April 16 1925: Garnier wrote to JJ from Strasbourg, thanking him for telling him about the death of Sigerson.....Garnier went on to mention Cosgrave's visit to Paris some three months previous (this is an indication of the extent to which they had lost touch) and attendance at an event which was presided over by a French bishop. Garnier noted that he had '...eus surprise de voir le chef de l'Etat ployer les genoux devant le représentant de l'Eglise...'.

This must have alerted Garnier to JJ's predicament in what he now saw as a Church-dominated State, and the correspondence re-opens. There was a fragmentary letter which from internal evidence seems to be in 1925, and which suggests another visit. The following names and concepts occur in the fragmentary text, more or less in sequence: Arthur Griffith, the Collins article, a history 1895-1915, a projected history 1915-1925, 'does JJ think this feasible between Aug 25 and Sept 25?...' How much would it cost? possibility to work in the library? Garnier clearly wanted to pick up on his Irish contacts with a new publication in mind.

There was a gap then in the correspondence; there are some references in the AK record, and JJ visited Paris in 1926, my sister remembers it. It remains to piece together what happened; there was a link with the Rockefeller episode(12).

The next letter is dated October 6 1928, and seems to be subsequent to a real-presence encounter.

It starts off with 'je viens enfin de finir - et de vour renvoyer - le livre de James Connolly Labour in Irish History. Je vous remercie de me l'avoir fait connaitre. Il est clair, fortement documenté et bien écrit. Quel dommage d'avoir anéanti une intelligence pareil! He then goes on to reflect on the savagery of the Great War.

Garnier was still apparently struggling with his book on Ireland, being continually diverted by the need to travel for the Foundation. He mentions an invitation to lunch from one Ferguson which he had been unable to take up; he mentions that Ferguson was with Professor Henry 'de l'Evolution du Sinn Fein'. He goes on to ask JJ for anything he can find on the life of Connolly, and what is JJ's opinion of him.

JJ had passed this letter on to someone, with the Connolly passages marked, asking the recipient to return it to him at 36 TCD, where he then had rooms.

There is again a long gap until March 2 1929 when Garnier replied to a letter from JJ which apparently must have informed him about my mother's pregnancy with me. This came unexpectedly, and posed my parents with problems, in that they had moved some distance from Dublin, to Dundalk, in order for JJ to have hands-on access to an agricultural environment. JJ must have explained this to Garnier, who empathises.

JJ must also have regaled Garnier with news of Irish political developments, which the latter found '..pas rejouissant..', responding with some analogies from the 3rd Republic. He is however primarily concerned with the financial scene, where he estimates that 4/5 of all private investments have been annihilated, and '..la democratie chez nous comme partout est en sommeil, empoisonnée par les méfaits de la guerre..'.

The next letter dated August 29 1930 began with a reference to receiving a photo of the present writer, not yet one year old. After the appropriate family compliments, he gets down to business; JJ has sent him his paper on 'national transport'(13). Garnier accepted this as an addition to the raw material for his Ireland book (still chronically in gestation!) in which he had now begun to focus on the 'urban civilisation' aspect, with La Cité Irlandaise in mind as title.

Turning to global politics, Garnier noted the resistance in Britain and Ireland to the European Federation project; Garnier regarded this as necessary to keep Europe significant as between America and Asia (a foretaste of current EU thinking).

Garnier noted with regret the demise of the Irish Statesman and asks after 'le brave AE', hoping he remains a pillar of Plunkett House.

In a footnote Garnier gave advance warning of a festive AK meeting on June 14, involving the British 'Boursiers', at which he hoped to see JJ.

Contact in the 1930s and later

If in the end, also, we gain access to the AK archive, repatriated from Moscow, we will perhaps be able to trace something of JJ's contribution to the AKF in the 1930s. At the time of Garnier's visit in 1938, JJ was campaigning for the Senate, and this flavoured the reopening of the contact. JJ however found time to set up contacts for Garnier with people who had known Kevin O'Higgins. On hearing of JJ's success back in Paris, Garnier invited JJ officially to join the Cercle Autour du Monde as a foreign member, and JJ accepted. His contact up till then must have been personal via Garnier, and with the standing of an ex Travelling Fellow. It seems perhaps that full membership was reserved to those who achieved public office.

There was some correspondence during and after the war. The first letter is dated October 12 1941, from Busnières (Saone et Loire). Correspondence presumably took place via neutrals like Portugal, and took many months.

Garnier thanked JJ for his letter of March 13 which took 3 months to come, and contained the news of my sister's first child Pat, making JJ a relatively young grandfather and 'le retour du senator Cincinnatus a la terre..'. Garnier gave in return the sad news of the death of his wife at Busnieres, at the beginning of summer, indirectly a victim of the war.

He hoped in the next few days to get permission to go back to Paris to his old address '..pas de gaieté de coeur..'. He mentions family matters, and refers in guarded language to '..l'aimabilité de notre ami commun..' meaning the British, who had ensured delivery of Garnier's wedding present to my sister, after it had been salvaged from a sunken vessel; it was a painting by his wife. I remember it arriving, the worse for wear; we were at the time living near Drogheda. JJ must have written his March 13 letter to acknowledge receipt and to thank Garnier, who in his response remarks on the wedding present arriving after the first child.

Garnier went on to thank JJ for thinking of doing a review '..des Houles(?) du Pacifique' and he asked JJ to add to his copy a note of the date of going to press, which was April 24 1940, '..avant la catastrophe..'. In view of the date, Garnier pointed out that the last two pages are of particular significance. (There is a loose end here, the book not being available. RJ Feb 2001)

The first post-war contact came by diplomatic bag via JP Walshe in Foreign Affairs and Sean Murphy of the Irish embassy in Paris. JJ had put out feelers to try to trace Garnier, and Sean Murphy, who had been earlier known to both JJ and Garnier in the Paris context, obliged, having Garnier's MS neatly typed up. It is dated March 23 1945 and acknowledges Sean Murphy as intermediary. He gives detailed family news: his nephew Daniel, a geologist, has found a petroleum deposit near St Gaudens. His daughter has been too occupied with the Resistance to make him a grandfather. Her uncle, Jacques Maritain, has been named as Ambassador to the Vatican; his mother was Protestant and his wife is a Russian Jew.

Garnier had just finished his history of Scotland. The Society Autour du Monde was asleep; the Rector of the University had dined with 'us' (presumably he means those who remained of the Cercle) in a restaurant, '..car les Huns ont vidé tout l'hotel que vous avez connu..'. This presumably refers to the quai de 4 septembre building.

July 24 1946: Garnier wrote from Argyll, Scotland, where he was staying with the Michesons: GK, who is the MP, and Naomi his wife, who is a Haldane (sister of JBSH). Naomi was locally an activist in the Scottish Nationalist interest, and was a local councillor; she sought to support the establishment of a Parliament in Edinburgh. Garnier had known her for the previous 20 years or so and regarded her highly.

He declined with regret an invitation to come to Ireland. He mentioned receiving a letter from Douglas Hyde's sister, and urged JJ to encourage me ('le scientifique de la famille', then just about entering TCD to do a science degree) to go to Paris.

The last letter I have from Garnier is dated April 25 1949, and is from 35 rue de l'Arbalète. The occasion was the declaration of the Republic in Ireland; JJ had recently completed a 10-year spell in the Senate, and had a public profile thanks to his association with the Post-Emergency Agriculture Commission. Garnier conveyed congratulations on the Republic. He was now 80 years old, and not very mobile. His daughter was working with the Marshall Plan. His nephew the geologist has recently been drowned in an attempt to save a colleague. He ended by asking 'when will you send Roy to me?'.

Epilogue

In this context I went to see Charles Garnier, at my father's suggestion. He was living in reduced circumstances, in Rue de l'Arbalète, 5ième, and we exchanged civilities over coffee and biscuits, without my understanding his significance or that of the Albert Khan Foundation. It is a pity that I had not briefed myself better on the Garnier correspondence, because I would have been able to pick up on the Mitcheson / Haldane connection, and we would have found common ground. I had encountered JBS Haldane, JD Bernal and others of the 30s Marxist scientific cohort, in the context of the 1940s TCD student left, via the Promethean Society. My failure to do this indicates the width of the then gap between myself and my father, and it is a matter for regret that I was unable to do justice to this opportunity to have a living link with the time of Parnell.

I had begun to pick up some understanding of my father's political role when in the early 90s I had occasion to be in Paris in connection with an IMS development project supported by the European Commission (I treat this in the socio-technical stream). I extended my stay, and made contact with the AK Foundation, primarily with Gilles Baud-Berthier, who has been helpful in enabling me to put this thread of the project together(16).

I hope eventually here to be able to give some more insights into the contemporary role of the AK Foundation, and to give contact-points. It seems they have an ongoing project to research the international liberal-intellectual network which they tried to set up before World War 1, and that this project extends to Tokyo, Moscow and other foci of 20th century tension. Watch this space.

Notes and References

2. I have recorded some extracts from her diaries in the 1910s family module.

3. There is a somewhat obscure reference to these articles in the Albert Kahn Foundation archive, together with other items of Irish interest (eg a book by Simone Téry, who subsequently became the Paris correspondent to the Irish Statesman. See the 1920s Albert Kahn module. I have abstracted the articles in the 1920s political module in the hypertext.

4. It is perhaps worth looking here at the work of Zaheer Baber on Indian science, which I reviewed in the February 1997 issue of Science and Public Policy (International Science Policy Foundation). The book reviewed was The Science of Empire by Zaheer Baber, State University of New York (1996).

5. Remember that JJ wrote this in 1916, pre-Rising. In his April 1920 footnote he added: 'nowadays Irish MPs go to Wormwood Scrubbs, Dartmoor, or Mountjoy, and the fleshpots of Westminster are tabooed.' It it worth mentioning that in his Civil War in Ulster he had proposed effectively Proportional Representation for elections under Home Rule. In this Report he does not expand on this, though he concluded by hoping that '..Ireland...will intellectually emancipate herself from the traditions of British politics to which her existing Parliamentarians have succumbed...'.

6. A more detailed abstracting of JJ's Albert Kahn Travelling Fellowship Report is available in the supporting hypertext.

7. The Albert Kahn Supplementary Report 'Food Production in France', overviewed in the hypertext, was published in Ireland as a pamphlet by Maunsel, and was reviewed in the February 24 1917 issue of George Russell's Irish Homestead. In his review, which headed 'The Country of Clear Thinkers' (referring to France), AE hailed it as 'a most interesting and thoughtful pamphlet' and used it to bring French experience in to support his view that the co-operative society rather than the County Council was the appropriate unit in Ireland for the State's dealings with agriculture.

8. I summarise this in the 1910s political module, this being its orientation.

9. The memoirs of James G Douglas have been edited by JA Gaughan and were published by UCD Press in 1998. I reviewed them for Quaker Quarterly, published by Friends House in London.

10. There are some notes in the hypertext extracted from the incomplete AKF archive in Paris, courtesy of Gilles Baud-Berthier the librarian. I have also abstracted the Garnier letters up to 1920.

11. In JJ's papers there are six letters from Garnier in 1921, four in 1922, seven in 1923, and then the pace drops off. I have abstracted them in sequence in the hypertext, with comments where appropriate.

12. In his Rockefeller application JJ emphasised the French aspect, and he went to the trouble to get from the Department of Foreign Affairs a letter of commendation, specifically naming the Rockefeller Fellowship. This letter, written in French, and signed by JP Walshe, Secretary, dated August 18 1926, remains among his papers. In his SSISI paper on 'Distributive Waste', which appears to some extent to be based on the objectives of his Rockefeller Fellowship, there is in the full text only a passing reference to the French experience. He did however make extensive use of his French experience in his Addendum to the Report of the 1926 Prices Tribunal. These are accessible in the hypertext.

13. I have abstracted this in the 1920s SSISI module in the hypertext.

14. See also the 1930s Albert Kahn module, and also the 1940s and later AK module; also the 1930s Garnier correspondence.

15. I treat the scientific experience of my French postgraduate epoch in the 1950s academic module.

16. I made several trips to the Albert Kahn Foundation in Paris during the 1990s and I have included some notes on these in the 1990s AK module of the hypertext.

Some navigational notes:

Copyright Dr Roy Johnston 2002