Sir, – Watching the TV pictures of the appalling devastation on America’s east coast, I was reminded of a plaque at the Mansion House in Dublin commemorating the extraordinary generosity of the impoverished dispossessed people of the Choctaw nation who gathered $170 in 1847 to send to Ireland to help the victims of the Great Famine.
It occurred to me that it would be a wonderful gesture for the Irish people to donate just a small drop in the ocean of need now there, despite our own straitened situation.
Would it not be a fine thing if each Irish citizen, despite our frightening circumstances, could give just one or two euro each to a special fund to the Irish Red Cross to be sent to the American people just as a gesture of empathy and concern? America, down through the years, has generously opened its doors to our emigrants, and helped us enormously in the peace process.
Surely we can show that we care. – Yours, etc,