Sir, - Your front page photograph (The Irish Times, March 11th) of an ethnic Albanian family fleeing the bombardment of their village has to be one of the most important pictures of the year. The old man with his plaid-trimmed cap, clinging tightly to the shoulders of his son, or was it his son-in-law, or nephew, or neighbour? Whatever the relationship, they wouldn't leave without the old man. That son, or son-in-law, or neighbour, himself grey-haired, struggling up the embankment. The younger woman behind, supporting them lest they slip back down again. And then the mother alongside with her toddler son, scrambling up with no-one to give them a hand. Were there more children behind? Or had the other little ones been hustled up the embankment already?
Did they all make it to the top? What awaited them there? When did they get their next meal? Was there enough to go round? Where are they all today?
I wished that everyone could stick a copy of that picture on the bathroom mirror, here in Ireland, in the UK, in France and Germany, all over this Euro-land of ours, and wherever The Irish Times is picked up on the Internet at this powerful new Ireland.com space - especially wherever arms and their component parts are manufactured and sold. I wanted us all to keep looking at this picture until, somehow, we can find a way to silence and then destroy the guns and the bombs that force families like this one out of their homes in terror.
Your photo reflects our culture of militarisation. That's the nub of the problem. How can we begin to change to a better way of solving political differences? How do we begin to redirect the energies of the lucrative arms industry with all its technological know-how, into an economy that serves and promotes human well-being? Even if we do not have answers now, let us at least live with these questions.
I don't know whether Tyler Hicks's picture will win an award. Trophies for raising awareness about the awfulness of war may be few. But it is an important picture all the same. -Yours, etc., Isabelle Smyth,
Medical Missionaries of Mary Booterstown, Co Dublin.