Sir, - The letter from Conn Sheehan (December 20th) is timely and commendable. It is indeed most regrettable that the 75th anniversary of the founding of the Irish Free State has been allowed to pass without any suitable objective commemoration of that historic event.
The political entity in Southern Ireland today known as the Republic of Ireland, is, in all essentials, the same State that was established on December 6th, 1922 as a result of the Anglo-Irish Treaty signed in London on December 6th, 1921 by Michael Collins, Arthur Griffith and the other plenipotentiaries.
In his biography of Kevin O'Higgins, the Irish writer Terence de Vere White quotes from a speech by O'Higgins, where he says: " ... in Ireland in 1922 there was no State, no organised forces. The Provisional Government was simply eight young men standing amidst the ruins of one administration with the foundation of another not yet laid, and with wild men screaming through the keyhole ... "
It is to be hoped that in some future time the names of those "eight young men", along with others, will be suitably honoured and recognised for their bravery and fortitude in defending the will of the people. It was men like W. T. Cosgrave, Kevin O'Higgins, Richard Mulcahy, Desmond Fitzgerald, P.J. Hogan who saved Ireland from almost total political anarchy in those terrible "blooddimmed" days of 1922/23. - Yours, etc.,
Ernan Morris,
Ballynoe Court, Bray, Co Wicklow.