FROM THE ARCHIVES:This editorial considered the state of the first World War memorial planned since before Independence and, some 10 years later, still being debated. It took a further nine years before it was completed on the eve of the second World War. –
JOE JOYCE
TEN YEARS ago the scheme of an Irish National War Memorial seemed to be assured of instant success. Its object was settled, and a sum of forty thousand pounds had been raised by public subscription. Who, in 1920, could have supposed that in 1930 the subscribers’ plans would be unfulfilled – their tribute an abortive gesture?
To-day every other country that fought in the Great War has dedicated some national monument to its fallen soldiers. Ireland alone has neglected this duty, and escapes the baseness of ingratitude only through the testimony of her “memorial records” – those eight noble volumes which hold the names of her forty thousand dead.
Certain causes of the delay are known to everybody. The original purpose – a hostel for British soldiers – failed when the British troops were withdrawn from Southern Ireland; and the later difficulties have been political. Revolution had stirred angry passions. The Free State Government has not been actually hostile, but manifestly has regarded the Memorial as an uncomfortable problem. It is unwilling to yield to a National War Memorial the pride of place which the subscribers desire, and it is anxious to avoid a clash of ideals in the concrete.
The Government discouraged the project of a Memorial Park in Merrion Square because, as the late Mr Kevin O’Higgins explained, the square, so transformed, might be interpreted as a sort of challenge to the new associations of Leinster Lawn.
This wish to suppress the grand significance of a National War Memorial is revealed in the Government’s latest offer of an obscure site on the road towards Chapelizod. We hope that the Memorial Committee will refuse such exile from the capital city which is free today through the valour of those forty thousand Irishmen.
The present situation is unsatisfactory. On the one hand we have the War Memorial Fund, idle, and now, we understand, amounting, with accumulated interest, to a sum of at least fifty thousand pounds. On the other hand we have hundreds of ex-service men, living in acute distress who complain that, asking for bread, they have received not even a stone.
We make three suggestions – in the first place, that a small cross shall be erected in the Phoenix Park, as a temporary memorial for the ceremonial purposes of Armistice Day; in the next place, that the interest accrued and accruing on the original fund shall be given to the recognised societies for the relief of Irish ex-service men; finally, that the main fund shall be maintained until its purpose – a worthy memorial, in a worthy place, to the men who died in the Great War – can be achieved.
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