"Just a contingency that was never enacted."
But was always a possibility, as the extract shows, and, had Ireland remained subservient, it would most certainly have been - Britain was feeding young men into the war like a butcher feeds meat into a mincer.
Throughout the war, especially towards the end, Britain was thrashing around for fresh meat; there was no reason in the world to ignore the irish - why should they?
Ireland could never have survived that process and become a nation.
"but in fact it was all made up by you!"
Keep this up as long as you like Keith, but you have not given a shred of evidence to back your denials and you have not come up with a single authoritative figure who backs your argument.
The Unionists did not wan independence for any part of Ireland and they said so publicly - even the compromise of The Home Rule Bill was regarded cynically - Britain backed them, in the case of the Home Rule Bill by making partition permanent and we've all suffered, British and Irish, for that single act of dishonesty in 1916 - that is the legacy we were all left.
If it is "invention" you have yet to prove it; you have denied it, nothing more.
Jim Carroll