Robert Erskine Childers: Quotes about war

Robert Erskine Childers was Irish nationalist and author. Explore interesting quotes on war.
Robert Erskine Childers: 60 quotes0 likes

“This Irish war, small as it may seem now, will, if it is persisted in, will corrupt and eventually ruin not only your army, but your Empire itself. What right has England to torment and demoralise Ireland?”

Robert Erskine Childers

The Daily News, 1919, as cited in "The Riddle of Erskine Childers" By Andrew Boyle, Hutchinson, London, (1977), pg. 260.
Literary Years and War (1900-1918), Last Years: Ireland (1919-1922)

“First let us rid our minds of the fallacy that guerrilla war is a wholly distinct thing in kind from regular war. It is nothing of the sort. War is a science whose fundamental principles are constant however wide or numerous the variations….”

Robert Erskine Childers

"War and the Arme Blanche", by Erskine Childers, Edward Arnold, (London, 1910), p. 231.
Literary Years and War (1900-1918)

“The British can sign and find a way to repudiate their signatures. They've done it over and over again. You need to go back to the Treaty Of Limerick. You have Malta and Egypt, for instance. They can always find high moral reasons for such repudiation. They are opportunists. Griffith, however, having given his word, would stick to it whatever the consequences, even though it meant the disaster of a civil war. They knew that.”

Robert Erskine Childers

Taken from a 1922, conversation between Childers and Brennan in regards to Arthur Griffith's decision to sign the Anglo-Irish Treaty (1921), cited in "Allegiance" by Robert Brennan, Browne & Nolan, Dublin (1950), pp. 254-55.
Literary Years and War (1900-1918), Last Years: Ireland (1919-1922)

“I served four years in the War under the belief, growing ever fainter but held to the end, that it was fought to make such things impossible, and now I am daily witness to the prostitution of the Army I served in to fulfil the many aims I loathed and combated. I am Anglo-Irish by birth. Now I am identifying myself wholly with Ireland….”

Robert Erskine Childers

A 1920 private letter to Admiral Herbert Fisher, cited in " Herbert Fisher (1865-1940) A Biography" By David Ogg , E&A, London, (1948), pg. 101.
Literary Years and War (1900-1918), Last Years: Ireland (1919-1922)