Sir, – I write as descendant of people who fought for and lost everything in Austria-Hungary for being on the losing side in the Great War. It is hard today to accept that right across Europe as the lights went out that young and not so young men embraced that conflict, as many did so in Ireland.
The lead-up to the war was toxic, with beating war drums inciting primitive instincts to slaughter one’s fellow man. Teachers spoke of a sense of duty to their students. Religious fervour and the just war were preached from pulpits. The spirit for adventure filled newspapers. Veterans of the Franco-Prussian and Boer wars filled young heads with wild dreams. Naturally all these sentiments were milked by the contesting empires for what they were worth. In the end, nothing.
Trade unionists throughout “civilised” Europe, including our own James Connolly, campaigned against workers becoming cannon and machine-gun fodder in an imperialist, industrialised war but their pleas fell on deaf ears and near empty heads. John Redmond MP surrendered the National Volunteers to take the oath of allegiance to king and empire. They fought, were wounded, traumatised and died accordingly.
Similar fates occurred elsewhere and led to the founding of Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia after the war.
It took a madness akin to the courage of today’s jihadists for people to choose to live in rat-infested trenches under constant bombardment, waiting for their commanding officer to blow his whistle, then the junior officers with drawn revolvers (for battle field punishment) to order their men out onto no-man’s land and over barbed wire, shell craters and felled comrades with fixed bayonets to confront distant machine guns. To survive was doubtless a buzz for some, but a soul-destroying horror for most.
When the war was not over by Christmas 1914, Ireland went on to prosper greatly from it by supplying food, drink, horses, hides, cloth, ships, explosives and other materials for the imperial war effort. In fact the Irish were valued more in their fields, farms and factories than at the front. By 1916 there was full employment. When revolutionary idealists took action at Easter they were mocked and derided by most, not least by those at war. Some months later those same soldiers fell to machine-gun fire at the Somme.
To be honest, I have mixed feelings for them. I do not share John Bruton’s opinions. They fought and died for the wrong reasons in the wrong war. – Yours, etc,
MICHAEL KUNZ,
Kilcoole,
Co Wicklow.