Irish misled into war against Central Powers

IN his recent letter on World War I, headlined ‘Emotional return to the killing fields’, Maurice O’Connell says the issues surrounding the involvement of so many Irishmen from the nationalist tradition (and the impact on their families) are extremely complex.

I do not find them at all complex. Even if they were, surely we should have unravelled them in the course of the nearly 100 years that have passed since these events occurred?

Hundreds of thousands of Irishmen were misled into fighting in a war against states and peoples they had no reason to fight.

What harm had the Central Powers — Germany, Austria, Turkey and others — done to Ireland that justified Irishmen taking up arms against them?

They were told it was for the ‘freedom of small nations’, but none of the countries I’ve mentioned had denied Ireland its freedom.

In reality, Ireland did not even get Home Rule from the state that promised such freedoms to the world. What it got instead, when it voted overwhelmingly for freedom in 1918, was the Black and Tans and the Auxiliaries.

So what is so ‘extremely complex’ about all this?

I suggest that Mr O’Connell is using the wrong words to describe these events.

Words such as ‘lies and ‘hypocrisy’ reflect the reality much more accurately.

Jack Lane

Aubane

Millstreet

Co Cork