Madam, - Andreas Ó Searcaigh (September 26th) draws a contrast between Francis Ledwidge's and Tom Barry's British army service during the first World War. His is a simplistic distinction between those who fought in British uniform between 1914 and 1918 and in Irish uniform between 1919 and 1921.
Mr Ó Searcaigh cites Ledwidge on his belief in a common British and Irish "civilisation" in 1914 against Germany. This fails to note a changed attitude after 1916. Ledwidge's poem about his fellow poet, 1916 leader Thomas MacDonagh, is well known. Less well known is Ledwidge's consistent poetic support for the Rising afterwards. Ledwidge's poem "O'Connell Street" began, "A noble failure is not in vain", and ended: "For mine are all the dead men's dreams". His attitude to Germans appears also to have changed. One of his last poems in 1917 was "To a German Officer".
Ledwidge's and Barry's views converged after 1916 - perhaps to a position expressed by Tom Kettle MP, who remarked after the Rising and the British execution of his cousin, Francis Sheehy Skeffington: "I shall be remembered, if I am remembered at all, as a bloody British officer'.
Irish attitudes were, at best, ambiguous. On his one experience on a recruiting platform, the father of Michael O'Leary VC urged those present to join up. Otherwise, "the Germans will come here and do to you what the English have been doing for the last 700 years". The British censor refused to allow the speech to appear in the Irish Independent.
The British Viceroy's private Secretary noted: "The men are drifting daily into the Sinn Féin camp." In 1920 the Viceroy himself said: "The haemorrhage of ex-service men to the ranks of Sinn Féin is well under way'.
In Cork that year demobilised soldiers and sailors fought street battles with British troops. Seven ex-service men were killed by British forces. The former British soldiers marched in formation behind the funeral corteges of Cork Sinn Féin Lord mayors Tomas Mac Curtain and Terence MacSwiney in March and August 1920.
The radicalisation of soldiers from the belligerent countries took many forms.In Ireland it took the form of growing support for Irish independence.Common to it was a rejection of empire and of imperialism. That should be remembered. - Yours, etc,
NIALL MEEHAN,
Offaly Road,
Cabra,
Dublin 7.