Sir, – I understand that the peoples of Sweden and Switzerland were the only Europeans to suffer less from violence than the people of Ireland these past 100 years; and Ireland’s good fortune stems from the actions of Pearse, Connolly and their comrades.
Had those comrades not fought in 1916 polite ladies would have offered them white feathers. It should be recalled that the first shots fired in anger in Western Europe in 1914 were fired at unarmed civilians in Dublin’s Westland Row by the King’s Own Scottish Borderers and that before Tom Clarke, Patrick Pearse and Thomas MacDonagh faced a British firing squad in 1916, Ireland’s best known pacifist, Francis Sheehy Skeffington had met the same fate before a British firing squad.,
Paddy McEvoy (November 14th) does violence to the historical record, apparently deliberately. He may, however, have been made a sucker for the historical poppycock peddled by unscrupulous merchants. There are some of them still about but a stone’s throw from Bachelor’s Walk, and as ill-willed as ever towards the people of Ireland. – Yours, etc,
DONAL KENNEDY,
Palmers Green,
London, England.