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Collins also managed to enter posthumously into debate on international relations when his name was invoked during a debate on the Kellogg Briand Pact, an international non-aggression pact signed in 1929. The Fianna Fáil Senator Michael Comyn quoted Collins’s views on the League of Nations as a ‘great diplomatic tug of war between Lloyd George and the French Tiger on the one hand, and President Wilson and the democratic forces of the World on the other hand.’ Comyn conceded that Wilson had won the day but asked whether peace could be preserved without Freedom of the Seas, and whether Britain was honouring such principles of freedom while occupying the Treaty Ports. He asked that Ireland seek guarantees about securing their seaborne supply lines before signing the pact.[10] Comyn’s point was certainly an interesting one and Ireland’s seaborne supply lines would become an issue in the next decade. But his invocation of Collins’s name is more mystifying. He could not, and did not claim that Collins had any position regarding a pact concluded six years after his death, and Collins’s views on the League of Nations were not very relevant to Ireland’s position on the Kellogg-Briand Pact. Nonetheless the episode serves as a good example of somebody quoting Collins to advance an argument, where the main purpose of the quotation seems to be the mere mention of the name.

Senator Michael Comyn invoked Michael Collins’s name during a 1929 debate on the Kellogg-Briand Pact, citing Collins’s views on the League of Nations as a diplomatic struggle between major powers and democratic forces. Comyn used this to question whether peace could be maintained without ensuring Freedom of the Seas and to challenge Britain’s control over Ireland’s Treaty Ports, emphasizing the need to secure Ireland’s seaborne supply lines before signing the pact. While Comyn’s concerns about supply lines were prescient, his reference to Collins was largely symbolic, as Collins, who died in 1922, had no direct stance on the pact, and his views on the League were tangential to Ireland’s position. This illustrates how Collins’s name was leveraged for rhetorical weight rather than substantive relevance.