Of course I wrote most of the Constitution myself. I remember hesitating for a long time over the US presidential system. But it wouldn't have done - we were too trained in English democracy to sit down under a dictatorship which is what the American system really is.

God has been pleased to save us during the years of war that have already passed. We pray that He may be pleased to save us to the end. But we must do our part.

For Irishmen, there is no football game to match rugby and if all our young men played rugby not only would we beat England and Wales but France and the whole lot of them put together.

We cannot afford idleness, waste or inefficiency.

It is indeed hard for the strong to be just to the weak, but acting justly always has its rewards.

Partition is after all only an old fortress of crumbled masonry - held together with the plaster of fiction.

An independent Ireland would see its own independence in jeopardy the moment it saw the independence of Britain seriously threatened. Mutual self-interest would make the peoples of these two islands, if both independent, the closest possible allies in a moment of real national danger to either.

All history is man's efforts to realise ideals.

If war comes upon us, it will come as a thief in the night

The economic and social problems would tend to become, like the military situation, more and more difficult as time went on and we became more and more isolated.

Unemployment is due to the large import of goods from Britain and other countries. The Government haven't used the powers which they have for the benefit of the country.

We hope that the plain people - the labourers and small farmers - will take this opportunity of coming together and working out the National programme.

We are fully aware that, in a world at war, each set of belligerents is over ready to regard those who are not with them as against them but the course we have followed is a just course.

Since this war began our sympathy has gone out to all the suffering people who have been dragged into it. Further hundreds of millions have become involved since I spoke at Limerick fortnight ago.

By keeping the annuities, we could build up a national industry every years as big as the Shannon Scheme.