In 1996 the movie "Michael Collins" was released. A very fine picture in many respects, we believe it was seriously flawed by the inaccurate and unfair portrayal of the great Irish leader, Eamon De Valera.

Movie critic Roger Ebert stated in his review that the film "portrays De Valera as a weak, mannered, sniveling prima donna" that some believe the movie set up as an "Irish villain to balance the British enemy". Ebert goes on to say the movie "makes Dev [De Valera] into a weaker and more devious man than he was."

Yes, and we will go further: De Valera was one of the great leaders of this century: a man who stuck to his faith, a man of principle, a man dedicated to peace and justice, a soldier who fought for freedom, a man who followed his conscious.

One of the real-life characters in the above movie, Harry Boland, friend of both Michael Collins and de Valera, wrote of de Valera in 1922: "[he] is at GHQ, hale and well, the same gentle, honest, straight-forward, unpurchaseable man that you knew. All the calumny that has been heaped upon him is British inspired; they failed to bribe or intimidate him, they now try the weapon of slander." It looks to us that what the British could not succeed at then is still being tried today.

We call upon movie studios and television networks to come up with an accurate movie, TV movie, or documentary on the life of this man, Eamon de Valera.