Madam, - There is nothing new in hearing calls for the Irish State to fully and unconditionally participate at official level in Remembrance Day ceremonies. Retired Irish Army Captain Donal Buckley, (November 13th) takes us to task for "intentionally and maliciously writing out of history a generation of our own people that fought and died for us".
There was hardly a family in Ireland left untouched by the tragic enormity of young lives lost during the Great War, so it is entirely proper and perhaps overdue that public ceremonies be held to commemorate those who went away and never returned.
What is not acceptable, however, and should not be tolerated, are the efforts at conferring a new respectability upon the British Army under the guise of honouring the war dead. During the course of the Great War, the British Army ruthlessly suppressed the Easter Rebellion, and during the War of Independence vile atrocities were perpetrated against those who dared to assert their own national identity.
Young Irishmen fought and died, including John Condon, the youngest British soldier to die in the war, for freedoms that were being denied to their own land.
The Irish who died in the course of the war should be honoured in a dignified and appropriate manner, without the pomp and pageant of the British imperial military ethos. Perhaps the greatest tragedy of all is the amount of debate centring on the extent of our participation in remembering those who were killed instead of on just who was morally and politically responsible for the atrocious slaughter of millions of men and women during the Great War. - Yours, etc.,
TOM COOPER,
Delaford Lawn,
Knocklyon,
Dublin 16.
Madam, - In one engagement in 1898, at Omdurman, the British army - with the aid of machine guns - killed or wounded 45,000 soldiers. Mass murder is the sort of thing that happens when you go around the world robbing people or, if you prefer, spreading the blessings of civilisation. This is how to become the most powerful country in the world, which is what Britain was at that time.
In 1914, the British élite - both Unionist and Liberal - chose to enter the war in order to preserve this position and to crush a rival. Countless Tommy Atkinses died, not "for you and me" (as Capt Donal Buckley writes), and not for their own interests, but in the interests of British power.
Nationalist Ireland believed it would win legislative autonomy if it supported the empire and its war. It may seem odd now but it was a far from illogical tactic at the time. Vast numbers of Catholic Irish enlisted to secure Home Rule. They were, of course, betrayed by the Liberals and as the war progressed, the likelihood of Home Rule for Ireland receded.
Independent Ireland should certainly commemorate these men, some of whom survived to take part in the War of Independence - a war that could never have been won had Britain not been broken in the Great War. However, the poppy, with its obvious and unavoidable imperialist associations, is certainly not appropriate. Instead, some form of commemoration should be found which acknowledges the role of the Great War Irish in the long struggle for our legislative independence. - Yours, etc.,
MAURICE EARLS, Rathgar, Dublin 6.