Madam, - Robin Bury (April 27th) was quite right. Pearse and his comrades started a holocaust with the Rebellion of 1916, and the holocaust has continued to this day.
There is no difference between the men of 1916, the so-called Old IRA of 1919 to 1921 and the IRA of today. They were and are all terrorists.
The period from 1919 to 1921 was not a War of Independence, but a reign of murder, terror, looting, robbing and burning. What it achieved was not independence for Ireland, but partition and all our present troubles.
It was the Rebellion of 1798 inspired by the anti-Catholic Wolfe Tone and his French republican allies that brought about the infamous Act of Union.
Sinn Féin did not win the 1918 election; it came to power by a reign of terror, intimidation and impersonation.
Furthermore, the combined vote of the Nationalist Party and the Unionists was 552,787, against 485,105 for Sinn Féin - a majority of 67,672 against an Irish Republic.
I am an Irish Catholic and proud of it but I would be ashamed to say I was an Irishman if I were a Republican. I am a Redmonite and glory in his name. John Redmond was the greatest leader the Irish people ever had. He united Ireland and made it a nation. His betrayal by the gunmen is, as I said, the cause of partition and of all Ireland's troubles to the present time, North and South. - Yours, etc.,
FRANK MEEHAN, Main Street, Portlaoise, Co Laois.