A chara, – Carlo Gébler reviews The Graves are Walking: The History of the Great Irish Famine by John Kelly (Weekend Review, December 1st). Gébler states that Irish nationalist John Mitchel, in his book The Last Conquest of Ireland (Perhaps), accused Trevelyan, the top British official in Ireland during the “Famine”, of “creating a special ‘typhus poison’ for the express purpose of destroying the Irish nation. It wasn’t true and today not even the most ardent Anglophobe believes Mitchel’s allegation”.
Mitchel was describing starving children he saw in Galway and wrote: “I saw Trevelyan’s claw in the vitals of these children; his red tape would draw them to death; in his Government laboratory he had prepared for them the typhus poison.”
Mitchel no more meant Trevelyan had actually made poison than he meant he saw Trevelyan’s “claw” in Galway. It was a powerful literary image, indicating that Trevelyan might as well have done these things because the effect of his Government’s policy was the same. The misreading of Mitchel, deliberate or not, only serves the purpose of trying to minimise the responsibility of the British government for the Great Hunger in Ireland. – Is mise,
MÍCHEÁL Mac DONNCHA,
Cill Bharróg,
Baile Átha Cliath 5.