Let’s honour Great War dead as our own

I WAS interested in the letter from Dr Pat Walsh (April 26) on the justification – or lack of it – for the invasion of Gallipoli by the British and French in 1915.

I am chiefly interested, however, in the effects of Gallipoli on Ireland and Home Rule, since surely that is what still matters to us here in Ireland in 2010.

I am baffled by Dr Walsh’s use of English and British as synonyms. Surely they are not, especially when imperial ambitions are at stake.

On last Sunday week (April 25) I was among the congregation in St Ann’s Church in Dawson Street, Dublin, for a commemorative service for Anzac Day.

What an irony that we still need to honour the Irish dead in the guise of honouring the dead of other nations.

In my mind I tried above all to imagine the Christian sacrifice of Fr William Finn, chaplain to the Dublin Fusiliers, ministering to the dying on V Beach exactly 95 years earlier – April 25, 1915 – at the expense of his own life.

We have a special need in Ireland to recall such heroic examples of Christian devotion in the midst of harrowing tales of child abuse within the church so that we may still see what is possible for us by way of a true Christian love.

We have still properly to remember the heroic Irish dead in Gallipoli (Catholic and Protestant alike) and to sorrow for the fact that, to date, that sacrifice appears to have been in vain.

Dr Gerald Morgan

School of English

Trinity College

Dublin 2