Dividing Ireland: World War I and Partition

THE GREAT WAR AND NATIONAL IDENTITY 105
for this appalling blunder had ‘recklessly sacrificed’ Irish lives. 101
The Independent balked at the total Dardenelles casualty list,
which, up to 11 December 1915, stood at 112,921, including 25,
279 killed, 75, 191 wounded and 12,451 missing, practically onethird
of the Western Front’s entire casualties. 102 The belated
publication of dispatches, while establishing that Irish gallantry
had been ‘magnificent’, also proved to the Independent that an
almost impossible task had been set to unseasoned troops. 103
Dennis Gwynn, Redmond’s biographer and at that time editor of
New Ireland, recalled that, from the 1914 retreat at Mons, during
which the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Munster Fusiliers had suffered
severe casualties in an epic last stand while acting as rearguard to
the British Expeditionary Force, an impression had grown in
nationalist Ireland that Irish troops were being used for the most
arduous tasks. So, when reports of the Gallipoli enterprise were
made public, indignation spread through Ireland when it was
found that the Irish regiments were not mentioned by name,
although practically every other British regiment was fully
honoured. 104 John Dillon expressed his anger at the squandering of
Irish lives, coupled with what he believed was an incessant British
demand for more Irishmen, when he told the House of Commons:
The fault lies not with the want of men, and surely to God not
with the bravery of the men who have volunteered, but it lies
with the higher direction of the War. It lies with the officers
who led our regiments at Suvla without artillery or a single
gun, and who hurled themselves to death on the slopes of
those hills which they would have carried, and which would
have enabled them to get to Constantinople had they been
decently led…. Before you send conscripts to the War in
Flanders or in the Balkans we must democratise the British
Army, and have some assurance that we shall have men to
lead us who will not lead us to death…. No, it was not the
men who have been found wanting, but the leadership, the
brains of the officers, the artillery and the guns…. What is the
use of throwing a vale over…proceedings and turning round
now and saying it is the slackers at home?…it is the
incompetent officers in the field…. The worst of it all is that…
there is no confidence… that the officers guilty or responsible
for these disasters will be withdrawn. We have…only too good
reason to suspect and fear that the British Army to-day, as it
has been in the past… [is] permeated with society interest.
Any man who has got a good strong pull in London society…