The latter half of the war years was a period of domestic stagnation and determined, if blinkered, introspection for Irish political life, bearing out more forcefully the accuracy of F. S. L. Lyons's observation that Irish society was divorced from the ‘fire of life’. This isolation was as much moral as it was political, and was determined equally by the disinterest of the Irish public as it was by the crippling effects of the harsh censorship regime. But there is an important distinction to be made between the Irish experience of war in its earlier and latter stages: whereas the years from the outbreak of war until the end of 1941 were characterised by internal and external tensions, there initially was a certain vibrancy in Dublin, which revelled – albeit in a muted, Irish fashion – in its status as a neutral capital. John Betjeman, the British press attaché, wrote strikingly of his impressions in early 1941: ‘And here neutrality, harps, art exhibitions, reviews, libels, backchat, high-tea, cold, no petrol, no light, no trains; Irish language, partition, propaganda, propaganda, propaganda, rumour, counter-rumour, flat Georgian facades – Guinness, double Irish single Scotch, sherry, censors, morals, rain home to all.’ By the end of the war, the privations forced by both rationing shortages and Catholic prurience provided a visiting American soldier with a twisted rationale for Irish neutrality: ‘no night clubs – no dancing girls – no wonder you're neutral, you've nothing to fight for’.