Clash of loyalties for patriots and soldiers

Following the upheaval of Easter 1916, honouring the patriots and honouring the soldiers who, at John Redmond's behest, had served in the armies of the empire against which the patriots had rebelled, became almost impossible to reconcile. In a number of the contributions to the Summer 2015 edition of Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, we hear echoes of this painful clash of loyalties as experienced at the time by individuals such as Francis Ledwidge and Tom Kettle and in whole communities such as Wexford, Redmond’s home town. In due course official policy and propaganda and the national mood clearly indicated which allegiance was now, alone, acceptable.

Thence began almost a century of silence regarding Irish participation in the First World War and, in a sense, regarding even the war itself. Only in recent years, with such mistaken reticence abandoned, have we begun to grapple with the reality of a war which had such an impact on so many Irish homes.

Heather Jones, Violent Transgression in the First World War

Thomas O'Grady, The Doubleness of Francis Ledwidge

Patrick Kenny, Fr William Doyle SJ and the Great War

Damien Burke, Irish Jesuit Chaplains in the First World War

Ronan O'Brien, Thomas Kettle – The Lost Leader

Tom Mooney, Silent Night at Wexford: How Opera Woke Up to the Great War

David Tuohy SJ, Jesuit Humanism in Education

The Summer 2015 issue of Studies is now available from bookshops or from www.studiesirishreview.ie, price €10.