With a war that has been studied as much and as often as the Second World War, it is not surprising that more and more the study has shifted from the major theaters and most visible conflicts to the periphery and the shadows. This is certainly the case when the consideration is of the study of neutral nations during the war, and Ireland in particular. Twenty years ago there were only a few, mostly well-received works on Irish neutrality during World War II. Since that time the number and scope of books about the “Emergency,” as it was termed, has expanded widely, as interest has increased and perhaps as more research materials have become available to scholars. Recent works on Ireland during the Second World War have considered several different aspects: the fate of Allied internees in Ireland; Ireland's role in the Battle of the Atlantic; the press and the war; the German presence in Ireland during the war; and, more to the point of this review, the role of censorship during the war.

Donal O’Drisceoil's pioneering work Censorship in Ireland, 1939–1945: Neutrality, Politics and Society (1996) is the first concentrated study of the Irish government's efforts to maintain a public commitment to neutrality. O’Drisceoil argues (and largely demonstrates) that the design and effect of Irish censorship was far larger than simply preventing potentially damaging information from affecting Irish neutrality. His concern in this work, however, is solely upon the Irish efforts, with little mention of how external propaganda might have affected their censorship policy.

In Propaganda, Censorship, and Irish Neutrality in the Second World War, Robert Cole attempts to fill that gap by providing a carefully researched, month-by-month account of what he terms the “war of words” between the propaganda outlets of the various agencies, as well as a similar conflict between those agencies and the censorship offices of the Irish government. Cole has previously written a book in similar format covering Britain's propaganda efforts throughout Europe during the war (Britain and the War of Words in Neutral Europe, 1939–45 [1990]), and he now effectively distills that work into a single case study. The result is a readable, at times fascinating account of the war, told through the filter of the various “spin” different groups placed upon events. Cole's exhaustive study of wartime archives, newspapers, and private papers gives his work a great measure of authority, even as some of its structure and practices weaken his overall presentation.

As a case in point, many of the footnotes appear at the end of paragraphs and apply to every quote or citation within those sentences. At times it is difficult to discern exactly which part of the footnote applies to which citation. Ironically, perhaps, this is largely the “fault,” as it were, of his extensive research: to cite each quote separately would likely have proved far too cumbersome in this relatively slim text. In a related problem, occasionally there is a quote from a particular newspaper (for example), and the citation refers to a memorandum or government report, not to the particulars of the news story in question.

Occasionally the text blurs the citations as well. At one point early on in the text, for example, Cole summarizes the editorial opinions of various newspapers in Ireland and Britain, setting it up as an active and apparently contemporaneous debate between them (12). This makes for an interesting and reasonably exciting bit of narrative. In the footnote, however, it's less clear-cut—the editorials and articles in question range in date from 1937 to 1939 and are not a dialogue between the various papers. Strict accuracy of account, in this case, was sacrificed in favor of readability.

Structurally, the book is a bit unwieldy. The strict chronological format of the chapters doesn’t allow for any sense of the overall efforts of each nation in question. To be sure, it seems pretty clear from the text that no nation had an overarching agenda for its propaganda policy during the war, but at times the narrative bogged down in what amounts to a veritable plethora of trees, with no mention of the forest. It would be interesting to see what a thematic study of the same propaganda efforts would reveal. And that leads to the biggest issue for a historian of this sort of study: there is no real way for scholars to gauge the impact of propaganda efforts and their significance, relative to other factors. Cole surmises that the effective use of Irish censorship against the incursion of belligerent propaganda played a large role in keeping the Irish people from the war, but since there's no methodological way to confirm that, this remains an untested hypothesis. He has meticulously examined the intent of the propaganda; its reception in the hearts and minds of the Irish people remains understandably opaque.

This is a valuable study and an enjoyable book to read. The interplay between the various “belligerents” in the war of words over neutral Ireland offers an additional insight into the global nature of the war and fits in well with Cole's previous studies of propaganda, as well as adding to the literature of the emerging field of international communications.