Sir, - I read with interest Father Brian Murphy's article in defence of Pearse (Opinion, August 2nd). The impression he seeks to portray of Pearse cannot, in my view, be reconciled with the reality of the man and the impulses that drove him.
Firstly, he claims that Pearse was somehow a man of peace. To make that suggestion in the light of Pearse's life, particularly from 1910 on, is simply baffling. He quotes Pearse in 1898 discussing scholarship and from an obscure passage in 1916 (where the obvious sub-text is that if violence is needed, then it should be employed) to prove this point. The fact that Pearse allowed the IRB and not the Irish people to decide when violence was needed lays bare the man's democratic credentials.
Amazingly, Father Murphy made no reference to the O'Donovan Rossa graveside performance or, even better, Pearse's yearning for the "red wine of the battlefield" in 1914. Pearse was utterly obsessed with war and fighting, and with blood sacrifice. It is wildly inaccurate and disingenuous to suggest otherwise. How much of his school system in St Enda's mirrored the same thought processes that drove Baden-Powell to establish the Boy Scouts? The preparation of youth for sacrifice in war was an identical aim of both St Enda's and the Boy Scout movement.
Pearse was a product of his time: driven by the same impulses that brought the crowds onto the streets in Vienna, Berlin, Paris and London to welcome the first World War. He welcomed war and did not resort to it as the final act of a man exasperated by democratic failures: he saw it as the means of social and political change to be first resorted to, political and democratic change coming later.
Father Murphy attacks Kevin Myers for daring to suggest that Pearse glorified violence. How he suggests that Pearse did not do so baffles me. How could anyone read his letters, political writings and poems and suggest that he did not glorify violence? The worst (and the most dangerous) thing about Pearse is that he glorified that of which he had no experience and did not really understand. Before the Rising, he didn't have to watch men die painful deaths and he certainly never had to see those who were left behind by war: widows, fatherless (and motherless) children, mothers, fathers, friends and lovers. Pearse never had to explain to a young child that he or she had no father because he had died for "Ireland". Anyway, it would undoubtedly have been distasteful for such a "noble mind" as Pearse's.
The Pearse cult continues to endorse this idea of violence as a cleansing, purifying thing. It is portrayed as a different type of violence to post-1969 violence. It is more distant and therefore cleaner, easier to endorse and accept. And Pearse is the high-priest of this cult. The Taoiseach even hangs a picture of him in his office. It is incredible that he should be seen as a role model in today's Ireland. How many young people have looked at Pearse and thought of peace? How many have thought of constitutional, non-violent settlement of disputes? How many have understood the true message of Father Murphy's own employer? And how many have thought of perfidious Albion, of a glorious death, of something so personally important that you (and others) should die for it and how many have actually gone down that road?
Father Murphy's quotation of A British officer at Pearse's court-martial is illuminating. Of course Brig-Gen Blackadder liked Pearse. He recognised a kindred spirit. The good general and his like were at that time driving thousands of young men into seas of muck to be machine-gunned and blown to pieces on the Western Front. Pearse didn't get thousands out but he made a good start. Others in the past 85 years finished the job which our "national martyr" started. We are only beginning to recover from the his legacy. Father Murphy and fans of this dangerous man should keep that in mind. - Yours, etc.,
Adrian Langan, Westgate, St Augustine Street, Dublin 8.