His Excellency Dr Michael D. Higgins, President of Ireland, delivers a oration on the occasion of the dedication of a Cross of Sacrifice at Glasnevin Cemetry, Dublin (a huge cemetery on the north side of the city, sometimes referred to as the "Dead Centre of Dublin").  Disgracefully, in my humble opinion, the speakers at this dignified and, one may say, prayerful ceremony were heckled by a small group of "dissident Republicans", persons hostile to the Northern Ireland peace process and the enhancement of relations between the Irish Republic and the United Kingdom.  These people support (or are involved in) continued attempts to perpetrate terrorist attacks in Northern Ireland.  They are very much out of step with the views of the vast, vast majority of Irish people, north and south - but their continued activity shows how difficult it is to kill an ideology - in this specific case, the ideology of physical force Irish republicanism, which has existed since the 1790s, and will carry on (albeit at present on a tiny scale) however anachronistic it may seem.

I hope I manage to visit the Cross before it is vandalized ...

Best regards, JR.

Cross of Sacrifice - Presidential oration.

29 July, 2014 - a Cross of Sacrifice is dedicated in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin, in the presence of HH Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, President of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, and HE Dr Michael D. Higgins, President of Ireland.  The Governments of Ireland and of the United Kingdom were represented.  Honour guards and colour parties were provided by the various branches of the Irish Defence Forces and by the British Army (Royal Irish Regiment, Royal Irish Rangers)' music was provided by combined British and Irish Army bands.

The Cross of Sacrifice, which was designed by British architect Sir Reginald Blomfield for the British (now Commonwealth) War Graves Commission, may be erected in any cemetery which contains 40 or more British or Commonwealth war dead from the First or Second World War.  Some 200-odd interments of British war dead from the two World Wars took place in Glasnevin.

"They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them."

- Laurence Binyon, "Ode of Remembrance" from "For the Fallen", 1914.

Cross of Sacrifice - Glasnevin, Dublin.

German 88 on display in Bessemer, Alabama.