Book Review: Alberto Bertozzi: Plotinus on Love: An Introduction to his Metaphysics through the Concept of Eros

Abstract

nationalists in Ireland. In Canada and Australia, Catholic clerics exerted a strong influence resulting in strong allegiances to Ireland alongside a loyalty to their dominion of residence. There is a wealth of numerical evidence on diaspora recruitment and an analysis of how Ireland featured in propaganda to entice potential recruits. The emphasis then shifts to combine the national with the international through a case study of the IrishCanadian Rangers founded by Fr McShane of Montreal. The only comment here is that I am not sure this chapter is situated correctly in the book as Chapter 6 returns to the domestic front. Chapter 6 explores popular reactions to departing troops, familial and fraternal support, and educational support for Catholic servicemen, at least until the large death tolls from the Gallipoli campaign. An examination of reaction at home and abroad to the passage of the third Home Rule bill, particularly among the clergy, opens the question of similar support for the IPP’s position on the war effort. The author points out that ‘public opinion towards recruitment was highly complex’ (p. 142) and some interesting analysis on attendance at recruitment meetings is provided. The book culminates in an exploration of what happened after the Armistice of 1918 to look at the notion of ‘amnesia’. It also offers some evaluation of the ‘place of the Great War’ in the later twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This book covers many topics, and the research certainly brings some new opinions and evidence about Ireland’s war effort. Voice is given to ‘ordinary’ people rather than military and political elites, and this adds value to the history of the period. The research throws light on the conflicting atmosphere among Irish people of all denominations and highlights the nuances within Irish society to the war effort both before and after the Easter Rising. By situating Ireland’s response within the transnational and international this study of the Irish Catholic war experience builds on the work of other scholars of the Great War. A wide range of secondary and primary source evidence was used, such as newspapers, educational publications, private papers, personal diaries, war journals and letters, reports and maps, memoirs and autobiographical accounts and nationalist witness statements from the Bureau of Military History Archives. This book will be of particular interest to scholars, students and history enthusiasts of the Great War in Ireland, Europe and especially among the wider global diaspora communities.