Commemorate the courage of soldiers and the insight of poets
The events of 1916 are too important for us to ignore and it is right on this 90th anniversary that we seek to confront them.
In his poem, The General (1917) Siegfried Sassoon, who won the Military Cross in 1916, writes:
“Good morning, good morning!”
the General said,
When we met him last week on
the way to the line.
Now the soldiers he smiled at
are most of ‘em dead,
And we’re cursing his staff for
incompetent swine.
“He’s a cheery old card” grunted
Harry to Jack
As they slogged up to Arras with
rifle and pack.
But he did for them both with his
plan of attack.
We may apply these lines with a vengeance to the events of July 1 1916 when 50,000 men paid the price for the plan of attack.
WWI did not produce any military leaders with the genius or humanity of a Nelson or a Wellington. The mixture of folly and callousness of a French or a Haig is still hard to comprehend and almost impossible to forgive. Clearly we are not commemorating them.
Thus we are commemorating the heroic fortitude of the common soldier in the service of his country (whether England, Ireland, Scotland, or Wales, but not Britain).
Here in the 26 counties it makes more sense to commemorate Gallipoli (April 25 and August 7, 1915) for it was in Gallipoli above all that patriotic Irishmen gave their lives in the doomed struggle for Irish Home Rule.
We may also be grateful for the example of the 10th (Irish) Division in Gallipoli. It was here (in accordance with the wishes of John Redmond) Catholic and Protestant, nationalist and unionist Irishmen fought and died side-by-side in a common cause.
We also do not commemorate the British leaders of that conflict, for they put the cause of British imperialism before that of their own countrymen.
WWI did not produce a national hero as it did in Winston Churchill in WWII. We do not remember the names of Kitchener (even though he was born in Ballylongford) or of Lloyd George with any great affection or admiration.
But we may learn the lesson (which we seem not yet to have learned) that we cannot blindly follow our political leaders when they lead us into war.
Let us celebrate instead the wisdom of our poets. Among them, the voice of idealism at the outset of the war gives way by 1916 to the voice of protest at the inhumanity of the war.
But the price of poetic protest (the true reward for a poet, not literary prizes) is vilification and charges of mental insanity.
Thus Sassoon found himself at Craiglockhart War Hospital near Edinburgh (far from the centre of affairs) along with Wilfred Owen and Ivor Gurney. This was as a consequence of his letter of June 15, 1917 expressing his “wilful defiance of military authority ... on behalf of those suffering now”. His letter was read out in the House of Commons on July 30, 1917 and deserves to be read side-by-side with the Easter Proclamation.
Thus it is fitting that we remember the events of 1916, and all the events, not a selected few. We need urgently to learn the lesson that these multiple tragedies have to teach us if we are to move forward on the island of Ireland in the 21st century in a spirit of peace and reconciliation.
Gerald Morgan
School of English
Trinity College Dublin
