He lost his case and was found guilty as charged, an outcome that dismayed officials in Dublin, who concluded that the British courts would not be symathetic to Irishmen living and working in Britain who used their citizenship to avoid conscription and remain in well-paid employment while others had to go and fight. Boland was sure that Irish nationals would not receive justice in British courts: ' It is merely going to with the devil in the court of Hell. Even if we had in our favour any law which the British courts would regard as binding on them, the British magistrates and judges, even the most upright of them, are certain to take the same view as Sheriff Hamilton took in the court of Paisley - namely that Irish citizens are British subjects, and that being the case, they are liable under the National Armed Forces Act to military service on the conditions laid down in that act. ' He advised that any attempt to avoid conscription on legal grounds would be ' absolutely fruitless. ' Irish officials were also concerned that court cases would publicize the arrangements made between the British and Irish governments in respect of the movement of Irish labour and open them to criticism in both countries. In particular Boland argued that the current situation was facourable to Irish citizens and that publicity might force the Irish government to reopen discussion on these matters. His advice was to reach a formal agreement with Britain to ensure that no further prosecutions were undertaken and that Maffey, Dulanty and the Dominions Office work out an agreed method to deal with any such problem if it occurred in the future. It seems that the Irish government was more concerned with the publicity than with the prosecution of its citizens. Although Faulkner obtained an exit visa and returned to Ireland in 1942, the problem did not go away. In 1942 Michael Murray and four others appealed against the fines imposed on them for refusing to be medically examined under the terms of the National Armed Service Act 1941. Murray and his co-defendants based their case on their Irish citizenship but were found guilty on the grounds that they were in fact British subjects. On appeal, Lord Caldecote, the Lord Chief Justice, delivered a verdict in favour of the lower court, concluding that under British law, the idividuals charged were indeed British subjects, notwithstanding the changes in the Irish legal and constitutional enviorment since 1932. De Valera responded robustly, denying that Murray was a British subject and insisting that Eire's citizenship laws be accepted by Britain. Notwithstanding arguments about jurisdiction and sovereignty, large numbers of Irish people from the north and south clearly volunteered to fight in the Second World War. Most figures circulated in the past are either seriously inflated or too conservative to provide an accurate appreciation of the numbers involved. The problem with the higher figures is that little evidence has been provided to sustain them; the best case made for large numbers is that made by Harrison. However we now have two sets of calculations that place the actual numbers in some perspective, though they do not give us a complete picture. Richard Doherty has shown that when the war started there was approximately 20,000 individuals of Irish origin in the British armed services. Three quarters of these were in the army, and given the hisorical association between Ireland and the British army this was to be expected. There rest were in the RAF and the Royal Navy. Doherty uses the accepted formula which holds that for every twenty-two members of the forces there was one death. On this basis, the 4, 468 Irish war dead give 96, 296 for the army. He provides additional figures of 9,500 for the Royal Navy and 12,000 for the RAF. This gives an overall figure of 120,000 Irish military personnel serving during the war. If there were already 20,000 Irish nationals already serving in 1939, then we have a residual figure of about 100,000 volunteers for the war period itself. Further calculations lead Doherty to conclude that 78, 826 service personnel were from Eire and 52, 174 were from Northern Ireland. A refinement of these figures has been undertaken by Yvonne McEwen who, with a first class piece of statistical analysis, has contributed significantly to our knowledge of the composition of the Irish regiments and put a human face on those who were conscripted and those who volunteered for these units. McEwen has established the name, age, rank, date and place of death and country of birth for all but a handful of Irish men who died in the Second World War. When she initially searched the databases she discovered that some 967 were unaccounted for in this way, especially when it came to place of birth. She cross-referenced the Army Roll of Honour with the data available from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission to reduce this number to forty-nine. For the purpose of her research, McEwen included Irish volunteers from both north and south but excluded men with Irish parents not domilciled in Ireland. Her calculations for war dead are 2, 241 from Northern Ireland and 2, 302 from Eire. This makes total volunteer war dead 4, 543 and multiplied by twenty-two gives a figure of 99, 946 volunteers from the whole island. Divided between north and south the figures come out at 49, 302 for Northern Ireland and 50, 644 for Eire. These numbers differ somewhat from Doherty's due to the different methods of calculation. I have accepted McEwen's figures as the more accurate, but should emphasize that they do not include those serving in the forces in September 1939, nor do they cover the Royal Navy or the RAF. If we include Doherty's figure for the air force and navy - approximately 22,000 - then McEwen's total increases to jst over 120, 000, making the two sets of figures roughly comparable. Irish intelligence reported that large numbers of Irishmen joined the RAF during the war so the figure might be somewhat higher. It is probably therefore safe to conclude that at least 60,000 Irish citizens actually served in the British forces during the Second World War, though if we adopt a higher figure for the RAF then it might be justifiable to push this up to 70,000. What this shows is that the figures circulated by the de Valera government were extravagant, but that nevertheless a significant number of Irish men and women from neutral Ireland did join the forces. What it also puts in perspective is the contribution made by Northern Ireland. Here again a figure of approximately 60,000 is not unreasonable and was a significant contribution from such a small population, challenging the charge that those who lived in the north were reluctant to Volunteer for war service. The research also provides some fascinating details. Although men of Irish origin won eight VC's during the war, only one of these was a soldier in an Irish regiment. Of the total Irish dead of 4, 543 those from Irish regiments accounted for 1, 385, suggesting that the majority of Irish volunteers found themselves in non-Irish regiments. McEwen discovered that in the Royal Irish Fusiliers those of Irish origin constituted 31 percent of the total, whereas those of Engliah origin accounted for 61 per cent. In the London Irish Rifles the figure for those of English origin reached 72 percent while the Irish contingent was 20 per cent. In some units Irish representataion was much stronger, particularly in Ulster regiments; nevertheless the interesting conclusion is that whatever reason traditionally Irish regiments had a majority of non-Irish. This was not due to the paucity of Irish volunteers, but to other reasons not entirely clear. It is impossible to determine if servicemen in Irish regiments or indeed other units of the armed forces were of Irish origin but not birth, or Irish born but domiciled in Britain. Using popular Irish names, for example, allows one to detect a considerable numbers of individuals of English birth who could have had an English background. A number of those interviewed by the Cork Volunteers Project had been born in Britain or had lived there for a considerable time, yet considered themselves Irish because their parents had been born in Ireland or because of their own birth. In some other cases we have evidence that individuals born in England of Irish parentage considered themselves Irish. Desmond Fay stated that while born in England he thought of himself Irish. In addition there had been an exodus of Protestants from Ireland after the Irish Free State was set up, and though some of these individuals would have identified more closely with Britain than Ireland, those with Irish antecedants could have been attracted to regiments with an Irish association. We can conjecture that English of Irish origin would have been more likely to apply for Irish regiments for sentimental or family reasons. Some regiments has specifically Irish customs attached to them, such as the distribution of Shamrock on St. Patrick's Day. In other cases the customs were more informal but nevertheless important to the character of the regiments. The Shamrock Club was opened in Hertford Street in London as an open house for Irish servicemen passing through the city; Leslie claims that some 40,000 service personel had signed in by the end of the war. These points are suggestive, while Doherty's and McEwen's work has extended out knowledge of this topic substantially, but we will have no way of knowing how many individuals of Irish origin gave British addresses when they enlisted. Next of kin might appear to provide a satisfactory answer to this, but as yet we do not have enough information to conform Gough's 1946 claim that 165, 000 Irish citizens volunteered. The volunteers were the most tangible and public expression of the war for many Irish people, while the impact of the conflict was also very direct for the families of the two thousand or so Eire citizens who died. This is over twice the number who died in the Civil War, yet their sacrifice has barely been acknowledged by Irish society. The families and surviving comrades remember, but only recently has the wider community begun to appreciate the significance of what they did. . . .