Appropriate to think of sacrifices in wars

MAIREDE Thomas (WM Letters, August 30) is right to highlight the sacrifices this country made in the Allied effort to overcome Nazi Germany.

Of all Hitler’s European enemies, Britain and Russia were the only ones he failed to overcome.

It’s hard to say who suffered most in the war, and how it would have felt had we been occupied. Having your country turned over by an invading army was the primary reason why, after the war, some countries in Europe felt it appropriate to form a trading alliance.

The Treaty of Paris (1951) established the European Coal and Steel Community, forerunner of the EEC and the EU, in order to “substitute for historic rivalries a fusion of their (France, Germany, Italy, Benelux) essential interests; to establish by creating an economic community, the foundation of a broad and independent community among peoples long divided by bloody conflicts; and to lay the bases of institutions capable of giving direction to their future common destiny”.

This is what has driven the European commonwealth. This is what prompts President Macron to assert that “it is more important to stop the EU from falling apart than to give the UK a good Brexit deal”.

How Mairede Thomas equates that to a demonstration of the EU’s intent “to force as much money from us as possible while giving us nothing in return” defeats me. If we vote to walk away from the table, then we must settle our bill before we go.

There is, of course, the option of staying at the table, for which we need a People’s Vote on the final deal or lack thereof. Among other things it might help Europe, which includes ourselves, to continue to avoid having to repeat the sacrifices we all had to make in two wars in the last century. This is particularly appropriate as we commemorate the first of those. Robin Lynn Sully