Sir, - Napoleon said that history is a legend agreed upon. The Spanish Civil War is a prime example of the truth of this dictum.
Because the victory of Franco's forces led to the establishment of a right-wing dictatorship, republicans assume, unwarrantably, that the defeat of Franco's forces would have led to a democratic regime in Spain.
Anyone who remembers, or has read of, the turmoil and violence of Spanish politics in the 1930s cannot doubt that a republican victory would have led to an equality despotic regime. It took the appalling fate of democracy in Eastern Europe in the years after the second World War for Spanish Communists to accept the discipline of democracy.
All civil wars are atrocious. The Spanish Civil War was no exception, but the atrocities were not upon one side only. De Valera was right. Non-intervention was the right policy.
However, let us honour the idealism and self-sacrifice of all Irishmen who risked or gave their lives in causes they believed in. - Yours, etc.,
Fergus Moore, Beauparc Downs, Monkstown, Co Dublin.