"And there would have been a bloodbath had partition not taken place as Keith has said"
There was a bloodbath immediately following the signing of the treaty and there as been a continuing bloodbath ever since - and will continue to be while the border remains.
What on earth is partonising about suggesting that no minority should be given the governance of six counties on the basis of their religion and that on that basis, those counties should continue to be part of another nation.
Simple exercise - put Britain in the same situation.
I don't for one minute an ultra-nationalist like Keith believes the guff he is putting up - excuses like Irish people were given the choice to move to the area they wished.
At the time of the signing of the treaty, Ireland was still reeling from the results of the Famine, yet it was forced to sign away the rights to the six richest, most fertile and most developed counties in order to appease a religious minority
"Would it have been better to hand over all of Ireland to the Republicans?"
The "Republicans" then were a different bread than the ones that followed, who were a direct result of the Catholic persecution which arose from the creation of an aggressive Protestant state.
It is often forgotten that 'The Troubles' of the seventies arose from the brutal putting down of peaceful marches demanding equal rights in the six counties, when the police directed banner-carrying men, women and children through howling mobs of stone-throwing Loyalists - that was the birth of terrorism in Northern Ireland - and it didn't take long for it to spread to mainland Britain.
The irony of all this is that, personally, far from being a nationalist, I regard national barriers as barriers to international co-operation - I am an 'Internationalist' if anything, but I have come to realise that while partition remains we will continue to count the body-bags.
"At least everyone had somewhere to go"
Now that's what I call patronising
Jim