Ireland's neutrality in the second World War was amply justified, writes Eoin Neeson.
In an article "Neutrality left Ireland isolated in a just war"(June 24th), Prof Geoffrey Roberts wrote scathingly of Irish neutrality during the second World War, of de Valera's role and of Senator Martin Mansergh's recent article about it.
The article casually insults the Irish government and people of the day and the 350,000-odd men and women who flocked to the auxiliary and Defence Forces to protect that neutrality and should be refuted.
Vintage Churchillism, it adopts a pose of impossible self-righteousness on three preposterous legs.
First, that Britain fought "a just war to liberate Europe from Nazism", taking part in the war on "just" and "moral" grounds alone; second, that those Irish citizens who joined the British forces were "Catholics and Irish patriots" who fought for Ireland as well as Britain; and, third, that Irish neutrality was amoral and "obscured the moral and political issues". The claim is eccentric, and the charges are serious and unfounded.
This is not the language of history, but of advocacy, and it is risible. Czechoslovakia, appeasement and Poland spring to mind.
Today a similar argument might be that Ireland was "amoral" for not participating in the Iraq war that President Bush says was the moral, just and democratic thing to do.
Regarding the first point: there was never a high-minded, moral leap by Britain to oppose Nazism (quite the opposite). When de Valera opposed the march of fascism in the League of Nations Britain was one of the countries that refused to support him.
There were then in Britain powerful and influential groups believing that its interests were best served in alliance with Nazi Germany - a matter, as Prof Roberts must know, of serious cabinet consideration.
To seek to varnish Britain's involvement in the second World War with improbable idealism is historically nonsensical. Even the "exact science" of hindsight itself has no absolutes. Britain went to war only when it felt threatened.
The established governing principle of British foreign policy that "Britain has neither friends nor enemies, only interests" was - then as now - neither shelved nor replaced by some species of geopolitical moral superiority.
When Britain - finally and reluctantly - did go to war with Germany it wasn't until its French allies forced the issue and its economic self-interest was threatened.
Regarding the second point: according to Prof Roberts some 70,000 Irishmen fought with the British army and were not just brave and valiant men, but "Catholics and Irish patriots".
The British Dominion Office figures for "men born in Eire" who served in the British army is 32,000, most of whom had lived and worked in England beforehand.
To maintain - courageous as they may have been - that they and other Irish volunteers served from (British) "patriotic" motives contrarily to the "amorality" of their homeland is ludicrous and offensive.
Like the countless Irish mercenaries who fought over the centuries with foreign armies, these "Catholic and Irish patriot" volunteers became British soldiers for many reasons - adventure, peer influence, economic reasons, perhaps idealism, too.
The strongest motive was unquestionably economic, a direct consequence of the Economic War of the 1930s when Britain's trade ban against Ireland reduced living standards to abysmal levels.
That was summed up by the NCO at Anzio who, asked by a German prisoner why he was fighting with the British, replied: "They fed me for seven years in England. Now I'm earning my keep".
Threats of British and later American invasions raised in great measure the spirits of our neutral people, swelling the ranks of our neutral Defence and Auxiliary Forces so that recruitment outran resources. They were the real patriots.
Regarding the third point: with the petulant claim that Ireland's neutrality was "amoral" we are also informed that there remains "an unfinished debate about the Irish State's neutrality during the war".
What "unfinished debate"? Who is debating? Here is a straw cockshot set up only to knock it down again.
As in other neutral European states - Sweden, Switzerland, Portugal ("England's oldest ally!") - we were neutral by policy of common consent pursued by our duly democratically-elected government.
What really appears to infuriate the Churchillian mindset is that neutrality - as de Valera intended - was a further and unequivocal statement of the "full sovereignty of the Irish nation".
Before raising this hare of mythical "debate" anyone would be first advised to read Winston Churchill's disgraceful attack on this country in May 1945 and de Valera's statesmanlike, dignified and just reply.
Unlike Britain's equivocal pre-war stance on Nazism, Irish neutrality was one of genuine integrity. It was, in addition, then a mere 17 years since the fledgling State fought its own "just war of liberation".
Ironically, to have done so would have contributed little to the British war effort, probably a good deal less than it acquired through de Valera's benevolent neutrality. Even the ports were judged by British naval experts to be of small strategic significance.
A debate does exist concerning de Valera's German embassy visit in May 1945. As is usually incorrectly stated, this was not to pay his respects to Adolf Hitler, but to acknowledge the death of the German chancellor and head of state following international protocol, as he repeated within days on the death of President Roosevelt. He did not do so on the death of Mussolini, who was not head of state when killed.
It is, of course, proper that D-Day and those who fell in battle be remembered, as should Hamburg, Berlin and Dresden and their appalling loss of civilian lives.
But these mighty events should not be used as excuses for wrong and ill-conceived attacks on the neutrality of other sovereign states.
Eoin Neeson is a writer and journalist