Today -100: October 28, 1924: Might have originated anywhere

British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald says that the Foreign Office thinks the Zinoviev Letter is real so he personally thinks it’s real but he hasn’t seen the evidence yet (he’s out in the country election-campaigning; this is a speech in Cardiff) and “so far as I know, the letter might have originated anywhere.” However, “it is a most suspicious circumstance that a certain newspaper [the Daily Mail, of course, which he later describes as “a certain London newspaper notorious for its false news,” which, you know, fair] and the headquarters of the Conservative Association seem to have had copies of it at the same time as the Foreign Office, and if that is true how can I, a simple-minded, honest person who puts two and two together, avoid the suspicion – I will not say the conclusion – that the whole thing is a political plot?” He says the Foreign Office’s letter of protest to Russia was a draft that had been prepared so it could be sent immediately if the letter were proven authentic, and it wasn’t supposed to have been sent when it was sent.

After his arrest at Newry for entering Northern Ireland, Éamon de Valera was put over the border and told not to come back. He came back, and is arrested at Derry/Londonderry.

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