No one who has stood among the vast war cemeteries of northern France or Belgium will fail to appreciate the significance of the ceremony which takes place today, Armistice Day, at Messines in Flanders. The President of Ireland, the Queen of the United Kingdom and the King and Queen of the Belgians will jointly dedicate a monument and park to the Irishmen of both traditions who fought side by side here in 1917. More than 50,000 from this island, Northerner and Southerner, nationalist and unionist, died in the trenches and the fields around Messines and in the other battlefields of the first World War.
It is now 80 years since the guns fell silent. Yet it is only in the latter part of this, the last decade of the century, that it has been possible for the two great traditions of this island to recognise each other's sacrifice and pain in the terrible blood-letting of that war. The mythology of Protestant Ulster refused to recognise the contribution of those outside its own ethnic boundaries. And the ascendant spirit of Irish nationalism consigned to oblivion the tens of thousands of young men - its sons, brothers, fathers, uncles - who freely went to fight in Europe.
The memorial at Messines, rich in symbolism, is in the form of an Irish round tower, reflecting the shared heritage of both Catholic and Protestant traditions in Ireland. The tower is faced in stone from an Irish workhouse and is surrounded by four gardens representing the four provinces. The inspiration for the project also reflects a combination of traditions. It was conceived and brought forward by Mr Paddy Harte, former Fine Gael TD for Donegal North East and Mr Glen Barr, once a leading figure in the Ulster Defence Association. It is a fitting tribute to those who laid down their lives for their fellow-countrymen and it speaks eloquently and optimistically of the new spirit of accommodation and tolerance reflected in the vote of the Irish people for the agreement signed last Good Friday in Belfast.
A few short years ago, today's ceremonies at Messines would have been an impossibility. Such was the strength of residual bitterness that Irish men and women could neither admit of the common ideals which brought their fathers and grandfathers together to fight the war to end all wars nor of the common humanity which now binds them in death. Yet there is scarcely a family of either tradition on this island whose bloodline does not number a relative who went to war in Europe in those four murderous years of 1914-1918. In one tradition, they are proudly commemorated. In the other, they have often been treated as if they did not exist or as if their war service was a dark secret, not to be referred to within the family. Many an attic or cupboard yet conceals a tarnished badge, a set of buttons or a webbing whose provenance is not spoken of.
The gesture of President and Queen standing side by side is without precedent in the history of relations between the peoples of these islands. It may be compared in its powerful symbolism to the occasion when Chancellor Kohl and President Mitterrand stood side by side at Verdun on the Meuse river where the flower of German and French manhood died in 1916. French and Germans have come to understand that their best interests and the future of their children and grandchildren are served by recognising their common stake in a Europe which is prosperous, secure and united, but within which every people can be free to express its own cultural, social and political heritage. Gael and Briton are adapting to the same realisation. New relationships are emerging and new, common interests are being acknowledged and legitimised. If it were otherwise, today's ceremonies at Messines would be hollow and the monument to the Irish dead no more than a meaningless assembly of brickwork.