O'Flaherty V.C., A Recruiting Pamphlet (1915) is a comic one-act play written during World War I by George Bernard Shaw.

The play was written at a time when the British government was promoting recruitment in Ireland, while many Irish republicans expressed opposition to fighting in the war.

The Irish were for the most part Roman Catholics and loyal Irishmen, which means that from the English point of view they were heretics and rebels."

[1] Dennis O'Flaherty, winner of the Victoria Cross for his outstanding bravery, has returned home to his local village to take part in a recruitment campaign.

In conversation with General Pearce Madigan, the local squire, O'Flaherty admits that he had not told his Fenian mother that he would be fighting for the British side in the war, not against it.

When Mrs O'Flaherty discovers that her son gave Teresa a valuable gold watch, she launches into a tirade and the two women berate each other mercilessly.

O'Flaherty's exploits in the war and role in recruiting drives are based on those of Irish Catholic Victoria Cross winner Michael John O'Leary.

O'Leary was also greeted by cheering crowds in his home town of Macroom, but he was jeered by Ulster Volunteers at a recruitment drive in Ballaghaderrin during the autumn of 1915.

"[7] Bernard Dukore notes that the play "vividly contrasts as background the poverty of the lower-class Irish with the prosperity of the landed Anglo-Irish ascendancy.