Sir, - Seeing, on television, parades this month in this island and its neighbour commemorating the dead of this century's wars, I was reminded of the first newspaper headline I ever remember reading, sometime in 1915, almost certainly in The Irish Times. I saw it again soon after in an illustrated newspaper under a photo of a woman. The words were: "Patriotism is not enough". I asked what they meant; I was told I would not understand. But they stuck in my memory; so did the name under the photo.
In due course, I realised I had stumbled upon the most poignant of all the bitter cries from all the millions that died in the 1914 war, and by far the most significant, and the simplest, of all the messages echoing from their millions of graves. Edith Cavell was a 50 year old English nurse. She continued nursing in Belgium when the German army invaded it. British soldiers were among the patients brought to her hospital. As a patriotic woman, she helped them when recovered to get away to Britain. This was against the law as proclaimed by the occupying army.
Edith was found out, tried and executed. Unnecessarily "cruel", indeed, but fair enough once the iniquity of martial law is imposed.
But she was allowed to send a message home. This was it. In her last hours, so early in that ghastly war, she had seen that, important though love of the fatherland may be, love for all mankind is a greater concept, harder to achieve but infinitely more fruitful.
Watching thousands on television recalling the dead of their own land in a variety of wars, a legitimate enough activity, I wished that in future Edith Cavell's message could be broadcast at all such parades. It is a reminder that all those millions died because their rulers were too stupid, or too greedy, to prevent these wars, and their subjects too misled, or unled, to stop them. - Yours, etc.,
Grosvenor Terrace,
Dalkey,
Co Dublin.