Sir, - Dara Redmond's account of the last few days of his grandfather, Thomas MacDonagh (Weekend, May 5th) is interesting on Gen Maxwell, but not quite complete. He quotes the general as saying, on May 12th 1916, that "no more will be heard ever again of an Irish Rising of 1916".Men like Gen Maxwell often go to their graves convinced they have done well. To be cursed with enough prescience to see within weeks that one has undone the very things one had set out to ensure must be hard. Ruthlessness had worked in the Boer War - why not now?By mid-June, he was reporting: "There is a growing feeling that out of rebellion more has been got than by constitutional methods. Hence Mr Redmond's power is on the wane - recruiting has practically ceased - there is a danger that Mr Redmond's party would be replaced by others perhaps less amenable to reason - the younger generation is likely to be more revolutionary than its predecessors."Yes. The time to head off the Rising was 35 years earlier. The contempt, simian cartoons and delay with which the "constitutional methods" were met had their effect. And Home Rule was still uncertain, no matter how many Irishmen died for "King and country". - Yours, etc., E.D. Doyle,Tower Road, Clondalkin, Dublin 22.