Sir, – Speaking in Cork this weekend Robert Ballagh disputed government plans to commemorate the Irish contribution in the first World War alongside our struggle for independence. While I in principle agree with Mr Ballagh, I feel that this is an opportunity for our Government to expose the fallacy of any romantic or noble myths surrounding this conflict.
The first World War was the opportune moment for our imperialist and capitalist masters. It allowed them the chance to dispose of their increasingly politically conscious subjects and to spend their zeal fighting each other rather than facing the real problem, combating their leaders’ misrule.
Our Government is ideally placed to highlight this as we Irish knew all too well the thanks rendered in the service of empire. The tens of thousands of Irishmen who died in France and elsewhere to allow Britain a few extra years in India got their thanks in the form of the Black and Tans and a divided island.
It is the chance for our Government to highlight the old lie which led many young men across Europe and the world to die for a worthless cause which did nothing to further the course of peace or international justice.
The Government can proudly echo Wilfred Owen’s epitaph that it is neither sweet nor honourable to die for one’s country. Or in this case anyone else’s. – Yours, etc,
Sir, – Robert Ballagh opposes the Government’s tentative combining a commemoration of those who fought in Easter Week and the War of Independence with an honouring of the Irish participation in the first World War (Home News, October 15th).
He invokes remarks from Kevin O’Higgins in 1927 to support his position.
O’Higgins may have opposed the Free State commemorating the first World War participants in 1927, less than a decade after its conclusion and less than five years after the beginning of the Free State.
However, his whole record in that government was one of trying to include in the development of the new state those who had either originally opposed independence or had opposed trying to achieve it by violence.
He was well aware that many more Irish had served in the British forces in the first World War than had participated in the Easter Rising or the War of Independence.
The year before he even proposed an admittedly romantic concept of unifying the island of Ireland as a Kingdom of Ireland, sharing a monarch with Britain as a means to put aside old hatreds and employ the full talents of all residents of the island in its development.
One can’t help but think that nine decades later he would unhesitatingly approve a joint commemoration, especially following the Northern Irish settlement and the universally approved visit by and reception for Queen Elizabeth last year. – Yours, etc,