A chara, - An aspect of the correspondence under this heading is the extent to which it reveals a surprising want of familiarity with basic facts about the Rising.
To begin with, and contrary to what has been stated (at even the highest level), the leaders of the Rising never entertained the crackpot expectation of a military defeat of the British. They were no more stupid on this score than anyone today posing the same question.
In consultation with the German general staff and admiralty over a period of 18 months, the Rising was planned to coincide with a great German push (at, as it turned out, Verdun).
Three objectives of the Rising were co-ordinated in that context, reinforced by the following probabilities (a) That Britain would sue for peace in 1916 (a serious consideration of the British Cabinet); (b) that Germany would either win the war or be in a position to demand satisfactory peace terms and an end to hostilities.
The objectives of the Rising were:
1. To re-arouse the independent spirit of the nation.
2. To proclaim the Republic.
3. To hold out militarily for a minimum of three days, thus satisfying the requirement that would enable Germany to fulfil its promise to give Ireland a hearing at the post-war peace conference as an independent belligerent nation. (Hence also the reference in the proclamation to "gallant allies in Europe".)
The military campaign was intended to be nationwide and to resort to guerrilla warfare for a time. Events dictated otherwise. But, as it happened, the only one of the three objectives not achieved by the Rising was the third, which was outside the control of the Irish.
Among the lasting shibboleths perpetrated about the Rising - based on selected quotations from poems of some of the leaders - is that it was a "blood sacrifice". As one who is no stranger to propaganda, especially of the British variety, I am satisfied that this is one of the most effective and enduring examples of black propaganda this country has been subjected to in modern times. The world would be in a fine mess if we were all to be judged by out-of-context sentences from scattered poems or other jottings.
"The tree of liberty must continually be watered with the blood of martyrs and tyrants," is a similar phrase, but it was not written by Pearse. It was written by Thomas Jefferson. Are we to take it that the American war of Independence was also a "blood-sacrifice"?
This and two other myths relating to the Rising are examined - and, I trust, disposed of - in my forthcoming book, A Trinity of Myths.
The second deals with the nonsense that Home Rule (dead in the water by 1912) would have brought all that the Rising and the War of Independence achieved. When it vanished (into an unlikely limbo in the British statute book) the Home Rule Act was superseded by the Government of Ireland Act 1920. It could, at best, have brought what Wales has today, together with the horrors of the second World War, a depressed economy and wages, gross unemployment and emigration, little industrial development and, of course, no Celtic Tiger; to say nothing of no clear national identity.
The third myth relates to the answer, never so far as I know hitherto examined or disclosed, to the question: Why Civil War a bare month after the Collins/de Valera Pact promised a way forward and had satisfactorily resolved political and military differences? - Yours, etc,
EOIN NEESON, Blackrock, Co Dublin.
Madam, - Margaret Lee (January 31st) asks: "If Mary Robinson had ventured into such terrain during her presidency it would surely have provoked a constitutional crisis". Does she not remember Mary Robinson's interference in the divorce referendum? Of course, divorce was part of the liberal agenda and supporting it was politically correct.
Seemingly, President McAleese's acknowledgement of the part the 1916 Rising played in securing our freedom is not so regarded by Ms Lee.
Like Rory O'Connor (January 31st) I hope that her speech will receive an "approving response" from the majority of Irish people. - Yours, etc,
Mrs MARY STEWART, Ardeskin, Donegal Town.
Madam, - Even if the voices of the 1916 leaders are "insistent still", then, judging by her speech at UCC, President McAleese is only half-listening; or perhaps the victim of a common ailment, just listening to what she wants to hear.
Noting that their "fundamental idea was freedom", she half-truthfully quotes the Proclamation in explanation - "the right of the Irish people to the ownership of Ireland", (your transcript, January 28th). Why did she ignore the rest of that fundamental statement - "and .. the unfettered control of Irish destinies (which is) sovereign and indefeasible"?
Perhaps it is because of her belief that the Good Friday Agreement "ends forever one of the Rising's most difficult legacies, the question of how the people of this island look at partition". But the Agreement does no such thing. Reminiscent of the coercive nature of the Rising, the Agreement's 50 per cent plus one constitutional clause would force a majority of the Protestant unionist/loyalists into a united Ireland. The acceptance of that unwanted clause was the price to be paid to "keep the guns silent".
Was that an honourable condition to force on them if the Proclamation calls for their being cherished equally with the rest of us? And is it compatible with another fundamental legacy of the Rising - our national flag; the white strip of which calls for a lasting truce between orange and green in, paradoxically, the cause of Irish freedom.
Sadly, the President seems to be unaware of there being such a call. - Yours, etc,
JAMES McGEEVER, Kingscourt, Co Cavan.