Wednesday's ceremony at Mesen was remarkable in so many ways, not least because it showed how one individual with imagination and courage can shift the whole weight of history.
In no way would I diminish the role of Glen Barr as Paddy Harte's generous partner in this project, but it was Paddy who tackled and transmuted into something more open and generous the single-track mind-set which had gripped nationalist public opinion between 1916 and 1918, wiping out the memory of all that had gone before.
Since I came to know him a third of century ago Paddy Harte has had one agenda: the reconciliation of nationalist and unionist. And he has pursued it so undeviatingly that he ruled himself out of mainstream politics. For politics is a stormy sea, traversed by frail vessels under sail, which must constantly tack to and fro to reach its destination. And Paddy's vision has been so fixed on that far shore that he has had no time for tacking.
From the outbreak of violence in the late 1960s until 1981 he used the freedom of opposition to build bridges to unionism, not just to respectable middle-of-the-road unionism, but the outer fringes. He was the only Southern politician with whom Ian Paisley would talk. And he knew many of the strange figures that lurked in the undergrowth of unionism.
On one visit to Belfast when I was minister for foreign affairs he and I were late for our last appointment with Ernest Baird at his chemist's shop on the Newtownards Road.
We found the shop boarded up, and as we stood there with our RUC minders a car drew up with a squeal of brakes. A head emerged from the driver's window: "Is it yourself, Paddy? And you've Garret with you. As UDA commander in East Belfast I welcome you, Garret. You'd be looking for Ernest? He'll be away over in the hotel. Follow me, I'll lead you there."
On another such trip our last call was to the Europa Hotel to meet the Official Unionists. As we arrived I realised I had no money to buy them a drink. Nor had Paddy. "Never mind. I know where I can get £10," said Paddy. Later in the car on the way back to Dublin I thought to ask him where he had got it. "I saw Andy Tyrie in the other bar. I knew I could get it off him."
So the unionists' drinks had been paid for by the UDA!
Paddy was able to keep us in touch with aspects of unionism with which our courageous Foreign Affairs representatives travelling around the North were neither able nor authorised to have contact.
The downside of this, however, was that his relations with the SDLP were correspondingly cool. Full of goodwill towards all, I'm not sure he ever realised the extent of this problem, which made it impossible to give him a role in government in relation to Northern Ireland. And when I came to form my second government in 1982 I made a mistake I have always regretted.
Seeking to give younger people a government role, I did not reappoint several of the older junior ministers who had served in the short-lived 1981-82 government. Paddy was one of those I dropped, to his bitter disappointment.
During the 16 years since then he has remained dedicated to reconciliation in the North, a cause he has pursued with a single-mindedness that other politicians devote to their constituencies. He founded the Partnership for Peace to raise funds for reconciliation purposes, and latterly has pursued, together with Glen Barr, the issue of bringing together what might be described as the two Irish military traditions sundered by the events of 80 years ago.
In all this work he has been recognised by other politicians in the different jurisdictions of these islands as being selflessly dedicated to the cause he has espoused. As a result, regardless of party politics, he has secured support for his efforts from successive leaders of Fianna Fail, culminating in the support the present Government has given to the Mesen monument.
During the past 15 years or so there has, of course, been a gradual shift in Irish nationalist attitudes towards the participation of Irishmen in British forces during the two World Wars.
Since the mid-1980s the annual commemoration at Kilmainham has brought together the two Irish military traditions, and several years ago the Garden of Commemoration at Inchicore, long neglected by successive Irish governments, saw a government-sponsored ceremony attended by a representative of Sinn Fein, Paddy Doherty. And two years ago Paddy Harte and Glen Barr led a North-South nationalist-unionist group, of which I was happy to be a member, to the battlefields of France and Flanders.
The erection of the Mesen monument, an idea conceived by Paddy Harte and Glen Barr during that visit, and its inauguration by our two heads of state together with the King of Belgium, represents the culmination of a process long in gestation. It is a seminal moment in the 20th-century history of Ireland.
Why has this process taken so long? Why did 80 years have to elapse before the two Irish military traditions come together in a final act of reconciliation?
I do not think there is a simple answer. It is not the past hatreds. Indeed, except among a tiny minority there has been little hatred on either side for many decades. Small-mindedness, perhaps, but not hatred.
No, the roots of our long-enduring reluctance to accept and recognise publicly the alternative Irish military tradition lie elsewhere. I feel there may be a clue in what my father wrote during the darkest moments of the last war, oppressed by fear of a German victory and conscious that only Britain stood between us and a Nazified Ireland. Nevertheless, looking back 26 years, he was able to recall clearly what had motivated him and my mother at the outbreak of the previous conflict:
"Our first reaction . . . of jubilation . . . soon gave way to a condition very close to despair. On the very declaration of war Mr Redmond made a statement assuring the English people that the Volunteers would protect Ireland. . . It immediately became apparent that [this] really represented the views of the majority of the Irish people . . . There were reports of the success of recruiting, of Volunteer bands marching to the station to see off their comrades who had volunteered for service in the British army.
"The movement on which all our dreams had centred seemed merely to have canalized the martial spirit of the Irish people for the defence of England. Our dream castles toppled about us with a crash . . . It was brought home to us that the very fever that had possessed us was due to a subconscious awareness that the final end of the Irish nation was at hand.
"For centuries England had held Ireland materially. But now it seemed she held her in a new and utterly complete way. Our national identity was obliterated not only politically, but also in our own minds. The Irish people had recognised themselves as part of England."
Whence sprang the belief that only a rebellion could rekindle the dying spark of Irish nationalism; although when the time came there were those who, like McNeill and The O'Rahilly, judged that the lack of any real prospect of success made the 1916 Rising inopportune. In the GPO he found that these qualms were shared in some measure even by Pearse and Plunkett.
After the achievement of independence a myth, totally at variance with historical reality, was created of an unbroken Irish tradition of violent resistance to British rule, allegedly enjoying widespread public support in successive generations.
This myth amnesia is the only answer to the fact that in 1914 the Irish people, nationalist as well as unionist, had in fact overwhelmingly supported the Allied cause, and that Irishmen of both traditions had in fact joined the British army in massive numbers, and had died in their tens of thousands. All of that had to be written out of Irish history regardless of the fact that by so doing the actual rationale for the 1916 Rising was also wiped from memory.
Thus those who had served in the British forces and had survived the Great War found themselves on their return rendered unhistorical. If they were not judged to have been traitors they were seen as having been fools. Their best course was not to talk about it, and many of their relations and of their children, identifying with the new State, found it best to forget the whole episode.
The poppy might still be worn by Protestants, but Catholic ex-servicemen and their families who wore this emblem were increasingly made to feel uncomfortable, or even threatened.
More might have been done earlier to heal the rift in Irish society thus created. But, then again, it was always possible that nothing at all would be done. Historians may well judge that the most important thing was that all this should take place at a sufficient distance from the events being commemorated for the closing of the rift to be accomplished harmoniously. Nationalist Ireland now has the capacity to understand and accept the points of view of both the majority and the minority of nationalists in August 1914.
We don't have to take sides any longer, to identify with either Redmond or Pearse. Both played valid roles and can now be accepted side by side in our Irish Pantheon.
As this climactic century approaches its close, our State has reached maturity.