Sir, The Fianna Fail leader Bertie Ahern TD, has rewritten the history books on the neutrality issue. He should return to the books.
The French were in Bantry Bay because Tone wanted them there. The Germans were off Kerry to guns to the 1916 insurrection the leaders of which sought aid from the Continent. The Spanish were at Kinsale because the great earls sent for "Spanish wine".
On FF analysis Humbert and Hoche were NATO generals. Whatever hopes one might have had that Fianna Fail would, in the 1990s, become a modern European party have been dashed by its gross opportunistic approach to the Government's White Paper on Foreign Policy. Yours, etc., Kincora Grove, Dublin 3.