Sir, - The specious selectivity of your Mr Myers - "myeropia" - is now a shrugging by-word. He flails when fancy takes or his latest lace-curtain peer prompts. In his Irishman's Diary of September 3rd he branded me as some sort of a nationalist nut and letter writing crank. In quoting my reaction to his distorted chant on 1916 he deliberately omits the key point I made: that the motivation for the 1916 idealists was to get rid of chronic British misrule and discrimination. My attempts to redress this twist fell on deaf ears. Some apparently are more equal than others in the fair game category.
In reply to the question he posited: of course he has the right to point out that as many children died in 1916 and was perfectly right to do so. Just as it is right to point out the number of children who died in Dresden, Coventry, Omagh, Sudan, the American embassies etc., etc. However his sotto-implied undertones that the Black-and-Tans and the British were a fine body of men, misunderstood perhaps, but upright and fair, trying to introduce the rule of law to recalcitrant natives, is what mars and jars.
The world "obsequious" seems to have stung both himself and Dr Purdie of Oxford (September 3rd). They should read the parliamentary trappings of royal addressers. Many Scots and Welsh are not enamoured of this feudal grovel. - Yours, etc., J. P. Duggan,
Cedarmount Road, Mount Merrion, Co Dublin.