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Was Churchill pronouncing the "Irish" as knaves for their neutrality or the Irish state?
I would be interested to know in view of the fact that my father from Skibbereen met my mother in England during the war and chose to join the RAF. His view was that if its good enough to live in, then its good enough to fight for. His younger brother Tommy Walsh went down as a gunner on The Prince of Wales. Only the elder brother remained in the relative safety of a neutral Ireland.
As an tangential aside to the "knave" question, did not Churchill get on famously with Michael Collins (The Big Fella) when the met in London? An association which might be linked with his later assasination.
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Manichaean,
I'm afraid I can't locate the quote. The only reference I can find on the web is to the VE day speech which is definitely aimed at the Irish government, as opposed to the people. However, that is not the quote I meant, which dated from earlier in the war. It is a quote that I remember hearing during my childhood, and I may be misremembering the exact wording. However, Churchill did disapprove of and criticise the Irish for their neutrality, and many articles may be found in support of this by a simple search on the web.
My citation of Churchill's remarks was not intended to spark any debate about history or neutrality, but to display that there was a feeling in England at that time that the Irish State, and by extension the Irish, were pro-Fascist and not to be trusted, and that this may have been in the back of Orwell's mind when he was creating or naming characters.
Just realised that this came out sounding snottier than I intended - sorry!
