The dead of the Great War should be enough to inspire peace on our island
AT 11 o’clock on Sunday morning I attended solemn Eucharist at St Bartholomew’s Church in Dublin 4. I did so wearing for the only time this year a poppy.
I hope that in doing so I did not give offence to anyone, but as we all know it is difficult not to give offence to someone for some reason or another.
More important than not giving offence in this case is the honouring of the dead in WWI and I am sure that most of us are borne down by the immensity of individual sacrifice and the immensity of the suffering involved.
My intention in particular was to honour the war dead of Lydbrook in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire and those of Trinity College Dublin, who lost their lives.
Growing up in a village such as Lydbrook, I got used to the names that were read out in church and outside the Memorial Hall.
It was both a proud and melancholy experience and in the 1950s I recall an old lady in central Lydbrook who was still mourning the loss of her only son in the conflict.
Since 1968, I have become more familiar with the 454/457 names in the Hall of Honour in Trinity College Dublin.
Their story is yet more melancholic than that of the Lydbrook dead.
They were mostly from wealthy backgrounds, and were well educated and well informed.
They were outraged by the violation of international law in the invasion of Belgium in August 1914 and by the German atrocities in Belgium, now also well documented by two Trinity historians.
After September 18, 1914 they were fighting for Irish Home Rule seemingly assured to them by the royal assent.
For the most part they were patriotic Irishmen (plus one Irish woman). Of the Trinity College Dublin dead, for example, 286 were members of the Church of Ireland, whereas only 23 were members of the Church of England.
In addition the 44 Catholics, 29 Presbyterians, 13 Methodists, five Unitarians, three Congregationalists, three dissenters or con-conformists, three Quakers, two Baptists, one Episcopalian and one Plymouth Brother in our non-sectarian university were by and large Irish.
Assuredly they did not fight for the partition of Ireland but to prevent it and for this reason their sacrifice has a special sense of pointlessness or vanity overhanging it.
But I refuse to believe that so great a sacrifice was in vain and I continue to believe that in their deaths we may find inspiration for the peace and reconciliation in Ireland that still elude us. Gerald Morgan
Chaucer Hub, Trinity College