The Gazette 1921-25

[AUGUST, 1921

The Gazette of the Incorporated Law Society of Ireland.

22

afford any reason why we should not emulate each other in doing homage to heroes, and, in so far as is in our power, recording and perpetuating their title to enduring ad miration and example. The Memorial has been erected in a spot and in precincts hallowed by the thought that in the joyousness of young life they have all, at one time or another, passed by it to 'l and fro from their lectures and in their daily pursuits. Aye! brushed against the very • walls on which is now erected the Memorial to their memory and heroism. They rest in soldiers' graves, but their example endures for us and our succeeding generations, and this Memorial, by the setting up of all that it stands for, and by its own artistic excellence, will serve to endow our professional precincts with an additional value, and is a possession ennobling and enriching our whole legal community. To the lessons it ought to teach and the traditions it is creating amongst us I attach the highest possible value, being as it is a united tribute to heroic example of fallen comrades ; let it also serve to inspire in us, as a profession greater unity, good fellowship with one another, and in that which all pro fessional men of high principle regard first and before all else, the performance of duty and a right sense of the true meaning of that word which ennobles all work done in its name. Properly appreciated, it will speak to those who come after us of those terribly critical times through which their forbears passed, of a time when members of their own legal family, fixing their eyes on the great realities of life and death, put duty first and, never hesitating, greatly dared, died and achieved, bequeathing to them, and also to us of this generation, a priceless example and tradition. Emotional regrets for them, however, will but little avail us, who should profit by their brotherly sacrifice, if such emotion does not react in such efforts and results on our part, as I have suggested, in the future, and help us to rise to higher levels and ideals. Most of you have read that breezy book of lan Hay's, " The First Hundred Thousand," and may recall the simple soldier lines which we might well associate with those gallant gentlemen to whose memory we do honour to-day.

instantaneously social barriers, all things that mattered or which, in pre-war days, we conceived to be important in the daily problems associated with the continual striving of a great population for solution of its relatively petty questions of political strategy and domestic legislation— important, of course, in a degree to any community—but obliterated by the threatened deluge of an unprepared Empire, which left us confronted with but one single problem that overshadowed all, one dominant purpose to which all other considerations yielded, viz., how to win the war and how to stem the avalanche which threatened us with disaster. Those whose deeds and memory we honour and perpetuate to-day, each by his individual effort helped to stem the torrent, but were lost in the flood. " It is the dead that win battles." It is the individual effort that spells col lective results. (8* By their sacrifice we have been saved and survive to carry on ; let us then, for God's sake, carry on in all things in a manner worthy of that sacrifice of young manhood to which our profession, in common with others, has paid its sad toll, and, generaly speaking, let us see to it that all the sorrows distresses and bereavements of the war do inspire us to closer union and to higher ideals of duty, of fraternity and of citizenship. If their example be utilised and appreciated by us for such a purpose their sacrifice will not have been in vain, and the aftermath of difficulty and unrest around us affords ample scope for putting such lessons into practice. They have passed beyond the sphere of contemporary hatreds and strife, the great events in which they participated for our sake are now passing into history—history which they will have helped to make, and now that this terrible convulsion has sub sided, we who survive 'may perhaps better realise in its true proportion the real grandeur and nobility of their sacrifice. In our divided country there is still no reason, thank God, why Irishmen of all shades of thought should not reciprocally join in recognising heroic deeds and the unselfish devotion of life to the safety of the community, nor do even current Irish affairs all human and