ABSTRACT
In the summer of 1936 Spanish politics suddenly engendered far wider concern than anyone could have anticipated because of the sudden and belated realization of the nature of the various Spanish factions. In many ways the Spanish war had been a harbinger of Irish foreign policy for the future: disinterested neutrality, a distaste for the ideological extremists and their entanglements, sympathy for the democracies but no binding commitments. In a real sense the Irish response to the Spanish Civil War institutionalized a national attitude toward external conflict that was not immediately apparent when first approaching the 1930s. Essentially, Ireland was on its way to becoming not just a nonaligned nation, a neutral in a contentious world, but also a pacifist state. The Irish establishment was appalled at the very idea that Ireland might become involved in alignments or alliances, might tolerate, much less sponsor, any military production.
