Sir, – If we want to find anything positive out of the conjuncture of the home rule crisis and the outbreak of the first World War, we might recall that it took tens of thousands of adult Irish males willing to fight for, or against home rule and sent them overseas to kill foreigners instead of each other. The British War Office paid them for their services and gave money to their dependants while we were spared the collateral damage of sectarian, tribal warfare.
Meanwhile the disarming of the Irish Volunteers after the Easter Rising in 1916 ensured that when war did eventually come to Ireland, from 1919 to 1924, it was on a much more limited scale than would otherwise have been the case.
Compared with other combatants in Europe we came off comparatively lightly. The absence of guns and people willing to use them was a blessing in disguise. As subsequent events proved, political violence could not cure the underlying social and economic maladies that beset Irish society north and south in subsequent decades. – Yours, etc,
PADRAIG YEATES,
Station Road,
Portmarnock,
Co Dublin.