1916 Rising has had more successes than it has failures

ROBIN BURY of the Reform Movement failed to answer the question I asked as to what would have resulted if the Rising had not taken place (Irish Examiner letters, March 13).

The answer is very clear - continual recruitment for the British army, conscription at the end of 1916 and tens of thousands of our young men, doomed to fight in a war that was no concern of theirs, delivered into the charge of British generals renowned for their brutality and, even worse, incompetence.

Bishop Thomas O’Dwyer of Limerick - the same man who later stood up to General ‘Butcher’ Maxwell after the Rising, stated early in 1914: ‘What have Irishmen or their forebears ever got from England, that they should die for her? It is England’s war not Ireland’s.’