Madam, - Amid the recent debate about "Ireland's Nazis", the cold reception offered here to Jewish refugees fleeing Hitler, and renewed unease about Irish neutrality during the second World War, a rather elemental fact has been overlooked.
An estimated 50,000 Irish men and women fought and worked in the British armed forces during the war against the Axis powers. This State may officially have been - to its eternal discredit - neutral in the confrontation between civilisation and barbarism, but a great many of its citizens were not.
A curious historical silence has blanketed much of this heroic service. Yet we owe it to those who served to remember that while the history of this nation may be written by the politicians who speak of freedom, the shape of our lives is determined by those who are willing to fight and die for it.
- Yours, etc,
SEAN COLEMAN, Brian Avenue, Dublin 3.