Madam, - One wonders what the reaction would be in America if Kevin Myers and your correspondent, Robin Bury, lived there and denounced George Washington in the same manner as they denounced Pádraig Pearse, James Connolly and others who fought for Irish freedom.
After all, George Washington could also be regarded as being a zealot who hated the English. Worse still, he inflicted, I am sure at least ten times more casualties on the British army then were ever inflicted by Irish insurgents down through the centuries and when they surrendered, he took all their arms from them and packed them back across the Atlantic.
Pearse and his fellow rebels did not loath the English. What was hated was British imperialism that, led by a self-appointed junta in London, spread conquest and horrors throughout the entire world resulting in the appalling sufferings of native peoples. Indeed this junta treated its own people as badly as they treated the Irish and never got any democratic consent for the waging of wars of conquest.
It is rather amusing to hear about the Irish Parliamentary Party and John Redmond being realistic. Would this be the same party that, without any authority from the Irish people, declared war on Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey and Bulgaria, causing the deaths of more than 50,000 unfortunate Irish men and the wounding mentally and physically of tens of thousands of others?
It is rather curious, the suggestion by Mr Bury that Irishmen in British uniforms would, if given the opportunity in 1918, vote for the Irish Parliamentary Party. Quite obviously, he knows nothing about his subject and never had an opportunity, as I had, of speaking with many veterans of the first World War.
For the record, they arrived back in Ireland with a hatred of the British army and the incompetent, brutal British army officers. They also in many cases, came back with guilty consciences, having been forced to commit atrocities or even to take part in the execution of their own comrades, allegedly for cowardice or desertion. Small wonder that big numbers of these soldiers - men like Tom Barry and Emmet Dalton - played an honourable part in the defence of the Irish Republic lawfully established by the Irish people in 1918.
Fortunately, the 1916 Rising led to an almost total collapse in the recruiting of cannon fodder for the British army in Ireland and the Rising raised national morale to the point where a united nation was able to thwart the British efforts to introduce conscription in Ireland in early 1918. By their actions, the 1916 leaders saved tens of thousands of Irish lives and set in train a series of events that led not just to the destruction of the British Empire but all other empires also. Irish people and humanity in general are deeply in their debt. - Yours, etc.,
PADRAIG Ó CUANACHÁIN, Old Youghal Road, Corcaigh.