Irony Lost

Every war is ironic because every war is worse than expected. Every war constitutes an irony of situation because its means are so dramatically disproportionate to its presumed ends. … But the Great War was more ironic than any before or since. It was a hideous embarrassment to the prevailing Meliorist myth which had dominated public consciousness for a century. It reversed the Idea of Progress. Paul Fussell

ht The Enlightened Economist

We have a different view of the First World War in Ireland. As the newly released military archives remind us, thousands of Irish men fought in the Great War and then in a 'greater' war for Ireland's independence. So the irony of war was lost on the Irish because the 'Meliorist myth' became a reality. Sort of.