February 1 1975
A few years ago a noted military historian in a book on the ghastly siege and defence of Verdun in the 1914-18 War described the “miasma of horror” which, over fifty years after the carnage, still clings about the place. In the many films, television programmes and newsreels which in recent years have concentrated on the frightful follies of war, that same “miasma of horror” has been re-created by the sight of endless rows of crosses over thousands and thousands of graves. No one, in any of these features, has dared to claim that, honoured and beloved though the dead of all nations may be, their sacrifice given voluntarily or brutally exacted achieved any betterment of the world they so violently left.
We in this corner of this island have encountered that “miasma of horror” right here in the heart of the city of Belfast when each year for the past three years or so we have gazed upon those tragic rows and rows and rows of crosses at the City Hall, each standing for some human being, a fellow creature, who met a violent death in our country. A father or a mother, leaving orphaned children, a husband or a wife leaving a desolate partner, a blithe adolescent on the threshold of a life full of promise, a harmless innocent child playing in the street or carrying out a family chore, a selfless social worker who brought happiness to the lonely and deprived. This list is endless, for violent death, by brutal, coldly planned and carefully carried out murder, or by heartless, wild, haphazard bombing and shooting, is no respecter of persons.
Is anyone going to have the temerity to say that some splendid aim, some noble cause, some object vastly superior to the value of a human life, has been achieved by this slaughter? Is there some transcendent right belonging to any section of the population of this island, or any part of it, which supersedes the basic right of every man and every woman and every child among our fellow countrymen to his or her own God-given life? Worse still, is there the very slightest prospect that such a right, should anyone assume it to exist, could be obtained by a continuation of the policy of exterminating those with whom some violent groups disagree?
Irish News editorial comparing the pointlessness of the violence of the Troubles to the pointlessness of the violence of the First World War.
