MICHAEL O'GRADY,
Sir, - Eamon de Valera did not preserve Ireland's neutrality in 1939 as Robert Charles O'Connor asserts (August 31st), for the simple reason that Ireland wasn't neutral before that date. In fact the outbreak of hostilities in 1939 led the government of the Irish Free State to adopt a neutral stance in that conflict.
This proved to be the genesis of the myth of Irish neutrality - myth, because the State did nothing to prevent thousands of Irishmen joining the Allied forces to fight in the war and returned Allied servicemen captured on our territory to Britain rather than interning them as was done with Germans.
As for Winston Churchill's famous speech, I'm sure he knew, because his generals told him in 1940, that the British Army for most of the second World War was incapable of invading Ireland and at the same time defending Britain itself.
His boast, like Sinn Féin's neutral stance and Fianna Fáil's commitment to neutrality (remember the PFP controversy) is so much hot air. - Yours, etc.,
MICHAEL O'GRADY,
Wilderness Grove,
Clonmel,
Co Tipperary.