I trust that you are not going to suggest that, if there had been such a war the British would have stayed neutral and not supplied weapons and even men to to support their newly formed six county state. - Jim Carroll

Not at all Jim, I merely pointed out what the Civil War in Ireland in 1922 would have looked like if Eamon De Valera had won his vote for rejection and the fighting had continued, of course the British would have been involved in it, backed up by about half a million Irishmen from the North.

The devastation throughout Ireland would have been epic, all the delegates at the negotiations realized that, and most who discussed it back in Dublin realized it.

While Britain could take on the IRA and fight them until the cows came home, the newly independent Irish Government could never hope in a hundred years to successfully defeat half a million men who did not wish to be ruled from Dublin. The newly created State of Ireland would have been destroyed from within before it even found its legs.