LETTER FROM DR PAT WALSH TO THE SUNDAY INDEPENDENT

Sent: Mon, 15 Aug 2016 10:57
Subject: [Aubane] Letter to Sunday Independent

The Sunday Independent published my letter yesterday but omitted the last paragraph Sir, James Mathers’ letter ‘Casement’s full story’ (7.8.16) is both unfair to Sir Roger and factually inaccurate. The view that “Britain was fighting for democracy and human rights” in its war against Germany and the Ottomans is frankly laughable. Britain’s Great War was a Balance of Power war waged to destroy an emerging commercial competitor and to absorb the strategic Ottoman territories of Mesopotamia and Palestine into its Empire. There is no event called the “Armenian Genocide”. “Genocide” is a legal term invented in the 1940s. For an event to be termed “Genocide” there needs to be a ruling by an international court. No such ruling has ever been made. Quite the reverse. European courts have recently ruled that arguing there was no “Armenian Genocide” is quite legitimate. Genocide in this case is merely an accusation with no legal basis and cannot be taken as fact. There is no telling historical evidence to support it and much evidence against it. The present Pope has no legal authority or knowledge in this sphere. The Pope of the time, Benedict XV, demanded the release of Turks Britain was attempting to put on trial for the so-called “Genocide”. The Turks did not “massacre one million Armenian Catholics” as Mr. Mathers alleges. Around 650,000 Armenians perished in the Great War from all causes, including insurrection, fighting in the ranks of the enemy, Royal Navy blockade, disease, hunger and poor conditions brought on by the Allied invasions, flight to the Russians, withdrawal with the French army in Cilicia or as victims of the mismanagement of the Erivan Republic, between 1914 and 1923. More Turks and Kurds died in the same period and the death rates in eastern Anatolia were comparable with those of the Armenians. So what we are talking about is civil war brought on by invasion. The vast majority of Armenians were not Catholic – they were Gregorian Christians worked on by Protestant missionaries to change their faith. Mr. Mathers mentions the Blockade of Germany. If Casement is guilty by association with the events in Anatolia, on Mr. Mathers’ logic how much more guilty are John Redmond and the Irish who served in the Royal Navy, which subjected Europe to a 4 year blockade that killed over a million civilians, mostly women and children? Dr. Pat Walsh (author of ‘Britain’s Great War on Turkey’)