Sir, - Each night and morning I creak to my knees and thank my Maker profusely for delivering up to us Kevin Myers, the journalist who has been receiving only belated recognition for setting the great unwashed Irish public right on so many important and contentious issues.
How could we have been so wrong? Why did we not realise that the influence of the clergy on the national character was mainly a benign and constructive one, and if their educational zeal occasionally veered towards violence - corporal , sexual or intellectual - we probably deserved it. Why did we not acknowledge the fact, as so often illuminated in the writings of this greet seer, that those few young men who helped establish today's Republic were not visionary heroes, but thuggish killers? And why did not we accept, until this journalist broached the subject on more than one occasion, that many young Irish men from this side of the Border were willing to die in the trenches of the Somme and elsewhere on the Western front with as much enthusiasm as their British peers?
We should also be grateful that all those readers of this newspaper who had been secretly creating supportive but un-sent letters have finally seen the error of their ways and have begun to heap their huzzahs on the humble shoulders of this selfless and dedicated practitioner of the journalistic art. So again this morning I have thanked God for the appearance of Kevin Myers on the scene and implored Him to reserve a place for him in Heaven, preferably on His right side, where he so obviously belongs. - Yours, etc.
John Henahan, Sandycove, Co Dublin.