Abstract

While the participation of Irishmen in the Great War has prompted much scholarship, the commemoration of their involvement – and in particular how Irish journalism reported and interpreted such commemorations – has been less examined. This article argues that the journalism surrounding the annual Armistice Day commemoration was a central factor in the battle for power in independent Ireland. It finds that the annual commemoration played a major part in the identity politics of the Irish Free State and that this was greatly intensified by journalistic argument about the motives of those who had fought in the Great War, what that war meant in relation to the freedom of small nations, and how best to commemorate those who had died. It also finds that while such journalistic argument helped engender an air of stigma about Irish involvement in the Great War, later journalistic arguments played a key role in removing that stigma.