"Many IRA officers also became involved in politics and Fianna Fáil, particularly, continued to be dominated by IRA veterans until the 1960s. Intensely nationalistic, even into old age, a twenty-six-county state failed to satisfy the aspirations of many veterans, even if few took part in or actively supported later IRA campaigns. Referring to partition, Petie McDonnell was to write: 'the cause for which they fought and were willing to give their lives, lives on'."