Remebrance Day

[oudysseos]

Probably I shouldn't reply, but I try and teach my kids to speak up for what is right, even if it makes them unpopular. Actually, I was never going to post on this thread, but then Shigawire did and I was ashamed not to have said anything.

Gleemonex, I guess I'm sorry that I seem to have made you so angry, although I didn't swear at you, insult you, demean you, or attempt to curtail your freedom of speech. I'd like to know why you felt free to do the same to me.

I maintain that if it is appropriate to remember those who fought and died in the War, it is also appropriate to remember those who refused to do so. I find their prison service at least as honourable as the military service that Remembrance Day commemorates. This is no more political than any of Gleemonex's posts. C.O.s who died in prison did so in service of my fundamental right (as it is now recognized by the United Nations) to refuse to kill.

At this point I have to declare a personal interest: Francis Sheehy-Skeffington is a (distant) relative of mine. He was jailed for opposing the war and during the Easter Rising was arrested and shot by Captain J.C. Bowen-Colthurst of the British Army, although he had taken no part in the uprising.

So that's a war story. I tell it because Bowen-Colthurst is one of the people whose service is marked by national holidays in Britain, Canada and the United States (we don't celebrate it here in Ireland), while Skeffie's sacrifice is hardly ever remembered.

I also have to point out that the truth is never demeaning. If I mention the service of C.O.'s it in no way diminishes the service of those who did not object to fighting. Why is the inclusion of dissenters, objectors, Mennonites, Huddites, wobblies, socialists etc. into a commemoration of those who gave of themselves so threatening? Why can't we remember all the people whose lives were destroyed by the war? Who is hurt by saying that all these people should not have died so horribly?

Celebrate this day by all means: I never told you that you couldn't or shouldn't. I just wish that more than one kind of service was commemorated.