What, I wonder, is Dr Jason McElligott doctor of? He recently wrote to this newspaper from St John's College, Cambridge declaring that my "attempts to rehabilitate, commemorate and celebrate those who died in the service of the British Empire demonstrate that he ME, KMis entirely comfortable with certain forms of squalid, brutal killing."
Well, if he were a doctor of politics, he'd know that this State, its elected President, its Taoiseach and the leaders of all Opposition parties have actively striven in recent years to rehabilitate, commemorate and celebrate those Irishmen who gave their lives in two world wars.
However, the bould doctor, perhaps holding a doctorate in the meaning of words, might dispute the word "celebrate". Here is the Shorter Oxford Dictionary definition of "celebrate", doctor: "1. Perform (a religious ceremony) publicly and in due form; solemnise; officiate at (Eucharist). 2. Observe (a festival etc.) with due rites; honour or commemorate with ceremonies, festivities. 3. Make publicly known, proclaim; extol, praise widely."
Most of these words describe perfectly what our President did so superbly at Messen/Messines three years ago, when she opened the tower to commemorate the tens of thousands of dead Irish of the Great War. It is what our Taoiseach Bertie Ahern has done too often to count. It is what his predecessor, John Bruton, did at Islandbridge in 1995.
Comfortable with killing?
Does this mean that these leaders are entirely comfortable with certain forms of squalid, brutal killing? Will the good doctor state as much in a public place? If he does, and he is a doctor of law, he will know this is a libel which would enable its subject to sue the good doctor till his teeth popped, and he spent the rest of his days begging for pennies beside the Cam.
Is he a doctor of history? Well, if so, he would know of these words by Sean Lemass from 1966, looking back to 1916: "In later years, it was common - and I was guilty in this respect - to question the motives of those who joined the new British armies at the outbreak of the war, but it must, in their honour and fairness to their memories, be said that they were motivated by the highest purpose, and died in their tens of thousands in Flanders and Gallipoli, believing that they were giving their lives in the cause of human liberty everywhere, including Ireland."
Electoral vote
Not history. So what is he doctor of? Can it be mathematics? Possibly. Let us look for clues elsewhere in his letter. "The 1918 election provided an overwhelming mandate for the creation of a republic on the island of Ireland." Did it? The Sinn FΘin share of the electoral vote in the 1918 election was 48 per cent. Possibly some branch of new Cambridge mathematics can interpret that as an overwhelming majority, but in the rather simpler world of sums inhabited by this column, it doesn't.
To be sure, Sinn FΘin won a massive majority of seats; but as any student - or indeed doctor - of Irish politics could tell you, the first-past-the-post system might give you parliamentary majorities, but the numbers of seats won will not necessarily be a true guide of how people voted or felt. And this does not even begin to deal with the scores of thousands of lost votes of Irish servicemen, or with the gross intimidation of constitutional nationalist candidates by Sinn FΘin or the vast amount of personation by Sinn FΘin, as testified to by almost everyone, most especially by Sinn FΘin people themselves.
It would have been impossible to conjure a united Irish Republic out of the election results of 1918, when seats won by Sinn FΘin were so disportionately greater than the proportion of votes cast for it. So he's clearly not a doctor of mathematics.
Possibly the doctor is a scholar of political theory. As such, and with the wisdom of hindsight, what practical political models could he now devise which would have satisfied the demands of the First Dβil when it gathered in January 1919, the day the IRA murdered the first two RIC men in its renewed campaign for the Republic? What useful institutions could he construct from its ratification of the Republic, when only 28 deputies out of 104 elected were present, as counted by Cathal Brugha, shortly before he left for England with plans to massacre the British Cabinet?
"Alien garrison"
Yes, I know that some of the Sinn FΘin MPs/TDs were in jail on charges trumped up by the British, but even allowing for that, the united Irish Republic was not serenely close to hand. Remember de Valera on unionists in 1918: "If they refuse their share in Ireland's glorious traditions, they're an 'alien garrison'. With such there can be no peace." So what's simple here, apart from your understanding of just about everything, doc? Can you catch this much? A wish to commemorate war dead doesn't mean one likes war. And because he wants State funerals for the Mountjoy Ten doesn't mean the Taoiseach is "entirely comfortable with certain forms of squalid, brutal killing".
To be sure, I disagree with the Taoiseach on the matter of those funerals, and he, quite clearly, with me. No other, broader judgements can be made on this disagreement - unless, of course, you are a certain kind of doctor in Cambridge. But a doctor of what? That, doc, is the worry.