Thomas Kettle

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Thomas Michael Kettle (February 9, 1880 - September 9, 1916) was an Irish writer, barrister, moderate politician of Home Rule Irish nationalist views, and economist.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Career 3 Army service 4 Family 5 Poetic testament 6 Bibliography 7 Notes 8 External link

[edit] Early life

He was born in Artane, County Dublin the son of Andrew Kettle, a progressive farmer.^[1] Kettle was educated at O'Connell School, then by the Jesuits at Clongowes Wood College in County Kildare, and at University College Dublin, where he served as auditor of the Literary and Historical Society and was regarded as a charismatic student. His friends at UCD included Francis Sheehy-Skeffington (Skef) and James Joyce. Kettle and Skef married daughters of David Sheehy MP.

[edit] Career

He then studied to become a barrister, being called to the Irish Bar in 1905. In the same year he edited a newspaper, The Nationalist. In 1906 he was elected a Member of Parliament for the East Tyrone constituency, for the Irish Parliamentary Party.

In 1908 he was the first Professor of National Economics at University College Dublin and developed a public profile as a commentator.

He retained his seat in the first 1910 general election but did not contest the second. He visited the USA in the Irish Party interest, and was there exposed to Irish-American extremism.

[edit] Army service

He joined the Irish Volunteers in 1913. He was on an arms raising mission for them in Belgium at the outbreak of World War I. He was horrified by the German atrocities against the local civilian population.

This experience resulted in his immediate return to Ireland; he then sided with the National Volunteers and John Redmond's call to support the war effort. He recruited for the newly formed 16th (Irish) Division and following his convictions served as a lieutenant with the 9th. Battalion of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers leaving Dublin on July 14, 1916 "to fight the barbarian".

As the news of the Easter Rising reached him he said "they have ruined it all, the dream of a free united Ireland in a free Europe".

He was killed in September 1916 at Ginchy in France, during the Battle of the Somme, previously having made the statement that he preferred to die out there for Ireland with his "Dubliners". A stone tablet commemorates him in the Island of Ireland Peace Park, Messines, Belgium.

[edit] Family

His father, Andrew Kettle, was a founder of the Irish National Land League. He married Mary Sheehy, daughter of David Sheehy, Irish Parliamentary Party Westminster MP, the brother of Father Eugene Sheehy, a priest who educated Eamon de Valera in Limerick. Through Mary's sisters he was connected by marriage to Francis Skeffington and Frank Cruise O'Brien, father of the iconoclast Conor Cruise O'Brien.

[edit] Poetic testament

Tom Kettle wrote a poem neglected in the anthologies and ignored by his biographer J. Lyons. It was called Reason in Rhyme, composed in answer to an English plea to forget the past. According to Tom Kettle's friend, Robert Lynd, writing on hearing of Kettle's death at Guinchy on the Somme in 1916, the poem represents Kettle's testament to England, and expressed his mood to the last.^{[2] [3]}

[edit] Bibliography

• The Day's Burden, Studies, Literary and Political (1910)
• Home Rule Finance. An Experiment in Justice (1911)
• Christianity and the Leaders of Modern Science (1911
• The Open Secret of Ireland (1912)
• Poems and Parodies (1912)
• Irish Orators and Oratory (1915) editor
• Battle Songs of the Irish Brigades (1915)
• To My Daughter Betty, The Gift of God (1916)
• The Ways of War (1917), reasons for serving in WWI.
• An Irishman's Calendar, edited by Mary Kettle

• German Atrocities, 1914: A History of Denial (1999) John Horne and Alan Kramer D.U.

[edit] Notes

1. ^ Callinan SC, Frank. "An Irish nationalist and our first European", The Irish Times, 2006-09-04.
2. ^ Conor Cruise O'Brien married Robert Lynd's niece, and attended Lynd's funeral in 1949.
3. ^ The poem runs:

   Bond,from the toil of hate we may not cease;

   Free,we are free to be your friend;

   And when you make your banquet and we come,

   Soldier with equal soldier must we sit,

   Closing a battle, not forgetting it.

   With not a name to hide,

   This mate and mother of valiant 'rebels' dead

   Must come with all her history on her head.

   We keep the past for pride:

   No deepest peace shall strike our poets dumb:

   No rawest squad of all Death's volunteers,

   No rudest man who died

   To tear your flag down in the bitter years,

   But shall have praise, and three times thrice again,

   When at the table men shall drink with men.

[edit] External link

• Works by Thomas Kettle at Project Gutenberg