Madam, - Padraig Ó Cuanacháin (May 7th) may be interested in the report in the Examiner of December 31st 1918, quoted by Peter Hart in The IRA and its Enemies. In a sample of 66 accidentally spoiled soldiers' and sailors' ballots in the Cork city district, only six first-place votes went to Sinn Féin candidates. Fifty-six of these men cast both their votes for the Irish Party candidates. As constitutional nationalists they had followed the call from their elected political leader and continued to support the party.
Also, it may be of interest that the 1916 IRB rebellion did not lead to the "total collapse of recruiting": 19,000 enlisted in 1916, 14,000 in 1917 and up to 11,000 in 1918. (David Fitzpatrick, "Militarism in Ireland 1900 to 1922" in A Military History of Ireland). How big a part they constituted of "what we were" can be judged by the total numbers involved: 250,000 or up to 500,000, if those who enlisted abroad are included, which, adding families, totals over a million Irish people.
The fault-lines between their philosophy of "constitutional nationalism" and "physical force" still plague all discussions of the period, even if we are all (except for a tiny minority like the perpetrators of the Omagh atrocity) constitutional nationalists now. In recent years we have come to realise that we are entitled to commemorate these nationalists, by our National Commemoration and through groups like the Royal Dublin Fusiliers Association. In so doing, we reclaim them for nationalism.
Mr P.H. Pearse, B.A., B.L., the mullah of physical force, was an idealist. The problem with this elastic concept is that it stretches from the naïve millenarian to the fundamentalist, death-wish fanatic. Where to locate someone on this continuum depends on the emotional response to one's reading of history. This writer puts Mr Pearse on the soft end, given that he never personally harmed anyone and he brought the revolution to an end to save lives.
His achievement, however, was to spark a revolution, for the first time in world history, because "the people were too content". His evidence for this was based on the recruitment figures referred to above. Revolutionary conspirators world-wide have since been green with envy. - Yours, etc.,
PATRICK D. GOGGIN, Glenageary Woods, Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin.