A chara, - I write to welcome the wholehearted reception by Kevin Myers (Books, December 1st) of German Atrocities 1914: A History of Denial by John Horne and Alan Kramer.
Not only is this a work of impeccable and ground-breaking scholarship, but it is potentially of great importance in enabling us to understand and evaluate the attitudes of Irish men and women towards the war in Europe in August and September 1914.
Above all it is a retrospective vindication (if such were still needed) of the mind and thought of the great Irish nationalist and patriot Tom Kettle. Irish readers knew at the time of the slaughter of civilians of "the material apparatus of butchery and destruction" and of the reduction of cathedrals to "mere dust and shards of stained glass", because it was explained to them in tones of passionate indignation by Tom Kettle, acting as war correspondent in Belgium for the Daily News.
They knew that Tom Kettle told them the truth, for he was a man of the utmost moral probity and his anger was a righteous anger. They believed it when he said that "Ireland had a duty not only to herself but to the world" and "the path taken by her must be the path of honour and justice".
There were not (and are not) empty words. Tom Kettle fulfilled his duty to Ireland and Belgium by returning to the Royal Dublin Fusiliers and to his death on the Somme in September 1916. In so doing he has set us a precious example of the love of truth and the desire for peace. He deserves more from his fellow Irish men and women, and indeed from Europeans generally, than the monument that testifies to his memory in St Stephen's Green. - Yours, etc.,
Gerald Morgan, FTCD, Trinity College, Dublin 2.