Honour soldiers who fight for a just cause

GERALD MORGAN says we should commemorate “the heroic fortitude of the common soldier in the service of … Ireland …” in the Great War, and he commends Gallipoli to us if we cannot stomach the Somme (Irish Examiner, March 13).

But there is no way in which Ireland was served by killing Germans, Turks, Austrians and Hungarians in 1914-18. Ireland had no quarrel with those people. Ireland's quarrel was closer to hand.

Whether or not they were courageous, the Irish in the Great War were not killing in a just or worthy cause. We would not commemorate those Irish who killed for the pro-slavery side in the American Civil War, not even if their heroic fortitude knew no bounds. The unspoken assumption in Mr Morgan's letter is that, though their generals were butchers, the common soldiers fighting on the British side were fighting in the cause of right.