Una Pope-Hennessy

Casement in Germany

by Una Pope Hennessy

1. Foreword

During the 1914–18 last war I worked in the Prisoners of War Department of the Red Cross. One of the tasks that fell to me was to list the names of the Irish prisoners who, late in 1914, were found to have been transferred by the German Government to a new camp called Limburg-am-Lahn. Some two thousand five hundred Irishmen were segregated at this place in order to receive more favourable treatment than had been meted out to them in the camps to which they had at first been allocated with their English, Scottish and Welsh comrades in arms.

It was known that Sir Roger Casement was visiting Germany in the autumn of 1914 and that one or two other Irishmen were making contact with officials in Berlin. Part of their business there was rumoured to be the recruiting of an Irish Brigade, but the reports of their comings and goings were vague and piecemeal and it was not until some years after the war was ended that circumstantial accounts of what actually happened to Sir Roger Casement while he was the guest of the German Government became available: they  p.2 were not accessible at the time of his trial. From two books in particular, Casement in Deutschland by Dr. Rothenfelder and Meine Mission nach Deutschland während des Krieges edited by Dr. Curry, I began to compile as consecutive a story as I could of what Sir Roger Casement actually did in Germany and of the way he was treated by German officials. Later I read The Casement Diaries edited by Dr W.J. Maloney, The Life and Death of Sir Roger Casement by Denis Gwynn, and Breaking the Silence by Dr. G. St John Gaffney. By piecing together printed information and private information the German side of the story became clear and it was obvious that Casement had had a very poor deal on the Continent. Interest satisfied, I laid my record aside with no thought of publication. Now, however, that the German authorities are once again segregating the Irish prisoners they hold, presumably to inoculate them with anti-British propaganda, it may not be a bad thing to bring to the mind of another generation exactly how an Irish missionary seeking friendly co-operation with the German Government was treated during the two years he spent in Germany.

The Irish point of view about England has always been more or less critical and continental and there has always been a disposition to seek in Spain, France or some other country the friendship and support believed to be needful  p.3 to help Ireland to recover her independence. Casement was in the line of men who came to believe that emancipation from the English administration could be secured and could only be secured by help from abroad. Although as a retired British Civil Servant his circumstances and obligations of honour were quite other than those of Wolfe Tone, Robert Emmet or Napper Tandy, he no doubt felt himself to be one with them in a tradition of patriotism.

Dr. Rothenfelder, an enthusiastic German admirer, writes of him as “a martyr in whose blood was sealed a perfect brotherhood of German and Irish peoples.” Dr. Curry, an Irish-American writing in German, undertook the “heavy holy duty” of proving that Casement by his work in Germany had laid the foundations of a friendship between Ireland and the German people.

The story of Sir Roger Casement's activities in Germany during the last war raises during the course of this war a question to which it is urgent the correct answer should be found. It is this: Is there no time limit to long-established national prejudice and hostility, no moment when spontaneously an ancient grudge gives way to a new deal? Perhaps as we  p.4 learn to see History not as something concerned solely with the past, but as life unfolding here and now while the present fashions the future, the folly of self-sufficiency becomes apparent, whether that self-sufficiency be that of an individual within a nation or that of a nation within a world of other nations all interdependent for their well-being whether material or spiritual. The history which is in the making to-day is that of the future of mankind. To search the roll of nations for England's enemies in order there to find one's friends is a pursuit which the history of the past has proved as sterile for the development of the Irish nation as Sir Roger Casement found it to be disillusioning in the last years of his life in Germany.

My only interest in publishing this record is now to show how unwise it is for Irish people, whatever their opinions of England may be, to believe that Germans will ever be willing, or were ever at any time willing to help Ireland for Ireland's sake. The cherished gospel of John Mitchel that England's difficulty is Ireland's opportunity is not true: on the contrary it is inevitably the opportunity of England's enemies be they Spanish, French or German, to make use of Irish grievances for their own advantage. To engineer digs in the back for one's neighbour is not really an admirable  p.5 or constructive policy however aggravating or even brutal that neighbour may have proved himself in the past. Some new way must be found in which Ireland can make herself felt as a power for good in the post-war world. Ireland alone can decide what that way must be.

2. BACKGROUND

In July 1913 an article appeared in the Irish Review signed with the pseudonym Shan Van Vocht. It was by Casement and was entitled “Ireland, Germany, and the Next War”. The thesis of the article was that the defeat by Britain by Germany must result in great gain to Ireland. If Germany “annexed” Ireland it was unlikely that she could injure Ireland more that Great Britain had done. Nothing done by Prussia in Poland had equaled the English handling of the Irish language and land. But Germany would certainly not treat Ireland like Poland but rather like Alsace-Lorraine. That Germany should govern Ireland ill was inconceivable, rather would all the best brains be applied to making “so priceless a possession” prosperous and reconciled. Ireland was a European island and nothing would suit her better than that the German Navy should be in possession of the seas around her coasts. If Ireland fell to Germany as one of the fruits of victory over Great Britain it would clearly be administered not as a Prussian province, but as a common possession of the  p.7 German people. It would not be to her interest to impoverish and depress her new-won possession, rather would she enhance its exceeding strategic importance by vigorous and wise administration so as to make it the main counterpoise to any possible recovery of British maritime supremacy, a supremacy largely due to Great Britain's possession of Ireland. To allay the fears of those timorous souls who thought it better to be ruled by the devil one knows rather than by the unknown devil one does not know, the author could state that Germany was better equipped intellectually and educationally to develop Ireland than twentieth century England. What a success she had made in forty years of Alsace-Lorraine during forty years! A province torn by force from the bleeding side of France and alien in sentiment to her conquerors (in a way that Ireland could not be to any changes of authority imposed on her from without) had within a short life-time doubled its prosperity and greatly increased its population despite the insistent call of France and despite a rule denounced from the first as hateful. The Prussian had certainly proved himself an able administrator and an honest and most capable instructor.

In a score of ways Ireland would stand to gain from the change of direction, of purpose, of intention and the inspiration and capacity of her new rulers. Whether she  p.8 liked them or not was beside the question. In this they would differ but little from those she had so long and so wearily had measure of. A copy of this article reached General von Bernhardi, the well-known German writer on strategy, with a request that it should be translated and circulated in Germany. Bernhardi in commenting on it wrote:
“It is not without interest to know that if ever it comes to war with England Germany will have allies in the enemies' camp itself … Who in any case will constitute a grave anxiety for England and perhaps hold fast a portion of the English troops.”

For the greater part of his adult life Roger Casement served as an official in the British Consular Service. The course of his duty had taken him to the Congo, Nigeria, Lorenco-Marques, Loanda, and Gaboon, where he had learnt to understand and sympathise with “natives” and had become disagreeably familiar with the seamy side of the intercourse between dominant and subject races as well as with the less pleasant aspects of commercial Imperialism. His entry into the Government Service was unusual. For two years he worked as a clerk in a shipping office in Liverpool, then at  p.9 the age of twenty-three became a purser on an Elder Dempster boat. Later he took an appointment ashore and joined General Sanford's pioneering experience in the Congo. He lectured in America on his experiences and when he got back to Africa was appointed by the Colonial Office as its Travelling Commissioner in the Nigerian Protectorate. In his thirty-second year he became Consul at Lorenco-Marques, at thirty-five he was transferred to the West Coast. After twenty-one years' service he retired with a knighthood, a C.M.G., a South African War medal and a pension.

Few people in London outside the Foreign Office knew anything of this official until his support of E.D. Morel's campaign against Belgian administration in the rubber districts of the Congo brought him to notice. Morel described him as “absolutely honourable”, “without fear” and “saturated with Africa”.

Between his last African post and his and his first appointment to South America, there was an interval of nineteen months during which he became “steeped in Irish affairs” and collaborated with Mrs. J.R. Green in keeping young Irishmen from enlisting in the British Army.

All through 1905 he was immersed in Irish problems, but in August, 1906 Casement received a letter from Sir Edward Grey offering him a post under the Crown as Consul at Santos  p.10 in São Paolo, Brazil. This he accepted. For a year he remained at Santos and then was transferred to Pará when he began to hear horrifying stories of the mistreatment of natives exploitation. Next he was appointed Consul General at Rio. He was forty-five when he was recalled for consultation in London. He then and there was ordered by the Foreign Office to proceed to accompany a commission of enquiry which had been appointed by the Peruvian Amazon Company to investigate conditions in the rubber districts. They appalled him, broken in though he was to atrocities and exploitation. He made his report and later requested to be sent on a second visit to the district to see whether any of the recommendations were being put into execution. His health broke down under the strain and he retired from the consular service in 1911. The Putumayo Report severely censuring the British directors of the rubber company was published in June 1913 and at once Casement rivalled E.D. Morel as a champion of the “native”. Suddenly he found himself boomed as a hero for whose uprightness and courage no praise was too high. His prestige became tremendous, almost intoxicating. The press hailed him as Don Quixote come to life again, and there was much in his physical appearance to warrant the comparison, for he had the pallor and black hair of the South, and something of the foreigner in his manner.

I met him at Mrs. Green's in  p.11 Grosvenor Road at this time. He was the lion of a little party which included E.B. Morel. As he stood for a while talking on that Virginia creeper-draped balcony overlooking the Thames, I was sensible both of his charm and his knight-errant quality. He seemed like a romantic survivor of less sophisticated days.

Till the age of fifty Sir Roger Casement had held English appointments and there had been nothing in his reports or actions to show that he was not a loyal servant of the Crown. From the date of his retirement, however, he conspired against England with an infatuation that gradually replaced rationality by a morbid hypnosis. He almost came to believe that British policy in the war revolved around himself.

In the days before the King had become for him the “Constitutional phantom” he dubbed him from the dock, Sir Roger Casement in a letter written in June 1911 to the Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, had presented his humble duty to His Majesty and expressed himself as deeply sensible of the honour vouchsafed to him by his appointment as a Knight Bachelor. “I am much moved at the proof of confidence and appreciation of my service on the Putumayo.” (in footnote June 19th 1911). Two months  p.12 later he sailed from England to Brazil on a second mission to the Putumayo to expedite the eradication of abuses and to bring the criminals concerned to justice. In July 1912 Casement's report and the official correspondence was published. It produced a storm of indignation throughout the world. Casement retired from the consular service and settled down in Ulster as a private individual on an English pension. In Ireland an apparent transformation took place, the kind of transformation that Edmund Spenser and Sir Walter Raleigh both commented on in their day. These Elizabethan gentlemen were worried because all settlers showed a tendency to become violently anti-English and resented the interference of the crown in their affairs, a tendency that was not confined to Ireland as the American Revolution showed.

It has to be admitted that all through the centuries Ireland has been England's great administrative failure since its government at no time rested tranquilly on the goodwill of the majority of the Irish people. Conquests, plantations, penal laws, harsh and mistaken methods of rule exacerbated the inhabitants of an island in which the sanctions of force were never accepted.

Nourishing his mind on ancient cruelties, Casement suddenly saw Ireland as a chained Andromeda waiting to be  p.13 freed from the maw jaws of the great dragon England, true enemy of world peace. The wrongs of Ireland loomed up as of appeared to him in overwhelming proportions and the passion to cut the English connection seized him and swung him off his feet. In his diary he says his action in supporting Sinn Fein was but the natural result of seeds sown in his mind during his period of unemployment in Ireland eight years earlier when he had busied himself trying to prevent Irishmen from enlisting in the British army.

In order to recapture and understand the state of tension to which Southern Ireland had been keyed up by the action of Ulster in arming to resist the application of Home Rule and something of the exasperation felt by Sinn Fein leaders at the inaction of the old Nationalist Party, the salient events of 1913–4 in Ireland must be briefly recapitulated.

In 1912 Mr. Asquith introduced the Home Rule bill. In January 1913 It was passed by the House of Commons (367–267) and rejected by the House of Lords. The bill included Ulster and if passed again the three successive sessions by the House of Commons would automatically, pursuant to the provisions of the Parliament Act of 1911, become law without the assent of the House of Lords. Ulster began to prepare to resist this contingency and the Ulster Volunteers headed by Sir Edward  p.14 Carson armed themselves and undertook to set up a separate government in Belfast should the bill become law.

In June 1913 the debate on the second reading of the Home Rule Bill was prefaced by two seizures of arms, one at Dublin consigned from Liverpool to Lord Farnham, the other at Belfast (1,000 rifles with bayonets attached) consigned as “electrical plant”, “to order”.

The debate opened on June 6th. During its course Mr. Balfour recalling the collision between the Victoria and the Camperdown in 1893 declared that a collision was approaching in Ireland. Sir Edward Carson asserted that Ulster was strong and ready to meet any emergency: she had behind her in armed resistance the whole force of the Conservative Party. John Redmond protested that the twenty-eight counties would not allow themselves to be intimidated by four counties. Feelings ran high but the second reading of the Bill was agreed to without a division.

Ulster forged ahead with her plans during the recess. On September 25th, 1913 the Ulster Unionist Council formally organized itself into a provisional government consisting of a central authority of 76 members with a military council.

In October 1913 a meeting of Protestants was held at Ballymoney, Antrim. Casement and Mrs. J.R. Green were  p.15 among the speakers. They protested that the exclusion of Ulster from the Home Rule Bill would prove no solution of Irish difficulties. Casement proclaimed himself an Ulster Protestant. The Times alluded to this meeting of dissident Ulstermen as the last few survivors of the Ulster Liberal of the old type. This provoked Casement, whose prestige at this time was considerable, to say that such good as had resulted from his humanitarian activities up the Congo and Amazon rivers had been made possible in the first place by the guiding light he carried from his own country, Ireland.
“With a mind thus illumined I was not ill-equipped for comprehending that human suffering elsewhere, however dissimilar the apparent environment might be, originated in conceptions of human exploitation that are both very old and very widespread and have not always been confined by civilized men to the merely savage and barbarous peoples of the world.”

Disgusted by John Redmond's policy of ignoring the Ulster campaign, Professor Eoin McNeill, an Ulsterman, Erskine Childers an English Liberal and other protestants insisted that counter-offensive measures should be undertaken.

Two months later a body known as the Irish Volunteers were brought into being at the Rotunda Dublin (November 25th) under the auspices of Captain White and Sir Roger Casement.  p.16 In raising this force Sinn Fein was imitating Ulster which had constituted its defence force more than a year earlier. So imminent appeared Home Rule that Viscount Massarene, the Unionist descendant of the last Speaker of the Irish House of Commons removed his ancestor's official chair and mace from the National Museum.

Four thousand volunteers enrolled at the Rotunda meeting, eight drill halls were at once engaged and within a fortnight fifteen companies had been organised. Faced with a double importation of arms the Secretary of State for Ireland, Mr. Birrell, was forced to take action. Two Royal proclamations prohibiting the importation of arms and ammunition into Ireland and their carriage coastwise were issued in December 1913, by the Government, while in the same month Sir Edward Carson speaking at Plymouth to 10,000 persons said that Ulster had 90,000 volunteers and a fund of a million pounds guaranteed by the people of Ulster themselves. The Ulstermen were better drilled than the Northern regiments at the outbreak of the American War of Secession and were commanded by a general officer who had seen active service. It was freely said that many other British Army officers would join him.

Casement and McNeill held meetings at Galway and Cork. They both admired Carson for asserting the right of Irishmen  p.17 to arm in support of their political beliefs. At Cork McNeill to the astonishment of his supporters called for cheers for the Ulster leader and with Casement was driven off the platform by an angry audience armed with chairs.

A few days before the meeting the Cork Harbour Board which had been deploring the cancelling of Cunard cells at Queenstown was overjoyed to learn that the Hamburg-Amerika line proposed to take their place. It was decided that the Harbour Board would go down in a body to welcome the German captain. Casement was excited by the news. Ireland surely must now be recognized as chief pivot of the freedom of the seas. Trading connections between Ireland and the continent were about to open. The steamers were to call on both outward and homeward journeys but the Germans intimated with regret that nothing in the nature of a public welcome would be agreeable to them. If such a course was decided on the calls must be cancelled. A little later an announcement appeared in the press that the calls were off.

Little heed was paid to the Royal Proclamation by either north or south. On March 9th a small Norwegian steamer which had been boarded at Dysart, Fife, by two members of the Ulster Unionist Council was reported from Berlin a week or two later to be shipping rifles from a lighter towed out  p.18 from Hamburg by a steamer bound for Langeland, Denmark. This ship, the famous Fanny, sailed for Ireland and on the night of April 24th–25th some 35,000 Mauser rifles three million cartridges were landed at Larne. The arms were distributed throughout Protestant Ulster by motor lorries and cars. 10,000 of the rifles and much ammunition were transshipped to the Roma and another steamer and landed on the Down coast. Some 18,000 men were engaged in the night's proceedings. Every detail of the scheme was so admirably organized, that nothing was heard of it at Dublin Castle till noon on April 25th. After this exploit warships were posted off the Ulster coast to stop further gun-running. Military measures were expected.

The third reading of the Home Rule Bill passed the House of Commons in May 1914 by 351 to 274. John Redmond that evening told a representative of the Freeman's Journal that the Union “as we have known it” is dead. He like the other old Nationalists was content to leave it to the Imperial Government to protect them in the event of trouble. All the same when towards the end of the month the provisional committee of Sinn Fein was about to devise a constitution and appoint leaders for the Irish volunteers, the Nationalist leaders imitated Carson in Ulster in insisting that the force  p.19 must not continue uncontrolled. John Redmond issued a statement announcing that his Party which had thought the movement premature bad been converted by the events of the Curragh and the gun-running in Ulster and for the past six weeks had given it their full support.

The importation of arms had also been arranged for by the leaders of the Irish Volunteers. Some weeks earlier an excited meeting had been held in which it was decided to procure arms from the continent without further delay. Darrell Figgis would buy the arms on the Continent and convey them to a rendezvous at sea, while Erskine Childers and his wife, the Hon. Mary Spring-Rice and Gordon Sheppard, would set out in their ten-ton yacht to fetch the rifles exported by an Antwerp firm. It was the role of Sir Roger Casement to go off as a second-class emigrant from Glasgow to collect American dollars to pay for them. He left Ireland on July 2nd.

On July the 26th, three months after the Larne coup had been successfully carried through, a white yacht, steered as greed by a lady in a red Galway petticoat, approached Howth. The arrival of the yacht coincided with a route march carried out by the volunteers. Some 2,500 Lee-Enfield rifles and 125,000 rounds of ammunition were landed by these men.

So immersed were both parties in carrying out their  p.20plans that they appeared oblivious to the danger of European war. The German Government fully informed of the situation by Baron Kuhlman who visited Ulster in July 1914 believed that no finer chance would offer itself than to take advantage of a state of affairs which it was believed must split the British army from top to bottom. The King attempted to find a way of accommodation after the Conference called at Buckingham Palace had failed to agree either in principle or detail on Irish affairs. The deadlock appeared complete.

The outbreak of the war altered the whole situation. The Home Rule bill, without resistance, became law for all Ireland in September 1914, but a contemporaneous act was passed which provided that it should not come into force until after the war, the Government giving an undertaking to bring in a further bill dealing with the Ulster situation.

To the confounding of all Kuhlmann's hopes and deductions, Redmond definitely pledged Ireland's support to the cause of Belgium.

3. THE ROAD TO GERMANY

From Meine Mission nach Deutschland and The Casement Diaries we may learn something of Casement's movements between the time he stepped aboard the Cassandra in the Clyde as the second-class emigrant R.D. Casement in July 1914 and the time he was evacuated from a German submarine on the west coast of Ireland in April 1916.

Before leaving Ireland he had been given full information of the timing of the plan for landing arms in Dublin Bay. We find him alluding to this venture as “my long-prepared plan.” It was due to be carried out on the 26th of July which was about ten days after he reached America. On arrival in New York he was at once invited by John Devoy, editor of The Gaelic American, to lunch. He then went on to see Joe McGarrity in Philadephia and returning to New York decided to accompany John Quinn and Bourke-Cochran to the yearly meeting of the Ancient Order of Hibernians at Norfolk, Virginia. It was arranged that he should speak on the Volunteer movement in Ireland. He was delighted to find a town beflagged with  p.21a green and to be warmly welcomed by Patrick Egan of the Tribune and other Hibernians. After addressing an Irish audience he travelled back to Philadelphia to stay with McGarrity for the critical weekend. Taking two of the Clan-na-Gael leaders, John Devoy and Joe McGarrity into his confidence he revealed to them his anxious secret. Sunday, 26th of July, was spent in talking, as only Irishmen can talk, of Ireland. The hot day wore to its close as they waited for the telegram revealing to them the fate of the hazardous enterprise. At twilight they lay down on the grass outside watch in hand counting the minutes. Later in the evening while they were still waiting at McGarrity's home, the editor of a Philadelphia newspaper telephoned through that the arms had been landed but had been captured by British troops. This message was quickly followed up by another saying that the volunteers had got away with the rifles. The next day Casement was involved with interviewers and photographers, he spoke most bitterly of English action in Ireland, for which he held Mr. Asquith responsible. A monster meeting was organized in Philadelphia to protest against the action of the British Government, Casement was the principal speaker.

It is evident from Dr Curry's record that Casement was liable to be caught up and absorbed by a single idea, but  p.21b set as he might be on the gun-running exploit, he could not but realize on the day which followed, the 3rd of August, 1914, that something bigger than civil war in Ireland was about to be projected on the screen of Europe for England's Prime Minister Sir Edward Grey announced that his government had committed the British Empire to war against Germany. This gave his thoughts a new orientation, perhaps there was a better way of freeing his country than promoting internecine strife. Leaning heavily on the threadbare axiom that any enemy of England must be a friend of Ireland, an axiom that was to fail him as it at failed every one of his patriot forerunners, he suddenly developed an interest in Germany, a country of which it is obvious from Dr. Curry's book he really knew very little, less than the average Englishman and if possible less than the average Irishman. When war was declared he wholeheartedly assumed that as Germany had become England's enemy, it must, ipso facto, have become Ireland's friend. Fired with the opportunities opened up by this assumption, and possibly inspired by McGarrity “in whose strong hands he felt himself a tool” he called on the German Ambassador, Count Bernstorff, “as the self-constituted representative of a people remembering its  p.21c past,” and explained how important it was that he should immediately be put in touch with German officials so as to acquaint them with the opening awaiting them in Ireland. Count Bernstorff had many important things to see to at that moment, but he assured Casement that he could arrange for him to go and explain his proposals in Berlin, if that was what he really wanted to do. Casement closed with the ambassador's offer and eagerly accepted a false passport. He was prone to act not so much according to a reasoned plan as on the spur of an immediate impulse which overwhelmed him … as we see it again and again in his friend's book — and in this instance it was probably some of the members of the Clan-na-Gael who gave him the necessary initial emotional impetus. Subsequent experiences in Germany preclude one from regarding him as their responsible agent.

At once he arranged with his friend the German scholar Kuno Meyer, ex-professor of Celtic Studies at Liverpool University who had sought refuge in America to re-publish his articles on the possible outcome of a war between England and Germany. “To Free the Seas Free Ireland” ran the sub-title. In the preface it  p.21d was stated that the whole six parts furnish in outline the case for a German-Irish alliance. The war had come sooner than he expected, he had hoped to write further chapters to show how vital to European peace was the European freedom of the seas and how “Irish national life and prosperity were indissolubly linked with the cause of Germany.”

Meanwhile the German ambassador cabled to his Government about his interview with Casement. “The decisive point seems to me to lie in the question whether any prospect of an understanding with England is now in view, or must we prepare ourselves for a life and death struggle? If so, I recommend falling in with Irish wishes provided there are really Irishmen who are prepared to help us. The formation of an Irish legion would be a grand idea if only it could be carried out.” ¹

A few days after the passport had been secured, a clean-shaven  p.22 man slipped out of the side door of the Prince George Hotel in New York and drove with a Mr. James E. Landy to the quay to board the Norwegian ship Oscar II. ² The real Mr. Landy left the ship before she cast off, and the substitute Mr. Landy found himself viewed with the deepest suspicion by his fellow passengers. They could hear from his speech that he was not an American, indeed his turns of phrase seemed to them quite English. Danes, Dutchmen and other neutrals shrank from so much as passing the time of day with him. At meals he sat opposite Baron Hauenschild and five of the staff of the Austrian Legation from Tokio [sic]. They took no notice whatever of him. Everyone on board appeared to think him a spy; he found it a depressing and humiliating experience.

The ship steered a northerly course for the Faroe Islands and somewhere in those seas the British cruiser Hibernia, as it chanced, ordered the Oscar II to stand to. Casement promptly dropped most of his papers into the sea. Marines came aboard, the Union Jack was run up and the Captain informed that the ship must make Stornoway, there to await the instructions of the British Government.

Supper that night was a rather melancholy meal. Passengers eyed Casement with greater suspicion than ever, for they felt certain that the appearance of the cruiser was directly  p.23 due to his information. A German lady, with an officer husband concealed as a ship's hand, confessed afterwards that she felt like murdering him. After a delay of thirty-six hours and the arrest of six men — two stowaways, two sailors, the second cook and the conductor of the orchestra — the ship was allowed to proceed on her way. Casement was not even interrogated but and German officials began to wonder at his immunity from capture. He attributed this to everyone being “too busy with Sunday dinners” and “killing the Kaiser with words” for “the despicable cat Curzon” to pounce on so apparently obscure a traveller. When the ship berthed at Christiania news was received that De Wet and Beyers had joined Maritz in South Africa, whereupon the Austrian diplomats ordered champagne and drank to the health of the South African Republic. ³

On landing in Christiania, Casement, provided with a cipher letter of recommendation from Count Bernstorff, called on the German Minister, Count von Oberndorff, and requested him to facilitate his journey to Berlin. The Count replied that he must first telegraph to the German Foreign Office for instructions. This made Casement, who was sure he was being shadowed and was not at all anxious to be caught with false papers of identity, very nervous and apprehensive.  p.24. However, the delay was not protracted, and soon his journey was officially sanctioned.

Casement, as the result of a chance meeting in Broadway on the day he landed in America, had befriended a young and unemployed Norwegian sailor, Adler Christensen. Before leaving America, he engaged him to go to Germany as something between a servant and a companion. Too uneducated to be called a secretary, he, in spite of the fact that Casement knew nothing about him, was the recipient of many confidences. Christensen's experiences in Christiania were of too pertinent and consequential a character to be accepted as coincidences. It is clear he could not have been the simple loyal ally Casement pictured him to be. To begin with he said he had been taken by a stranger to the British Legation and closely questioned as to what he knew of a tall dark passenger on the Oscar II According to his own account he pretended to be crassly stupid and to know nothing. The next day he reported to his employer that he had been interviewed by a person he took to be the British Minister himself who had told him that he knew all about Sir Roger Casement and of his intention of going to Berlin, adding that the “Germans would think him a fool for his pains as Ireland did not interest them in the least!” Christensen also stated that a hint  p.25 had ben given him that a reward of £5,000 for the disappearance of the Irishman might be forthcoming. As proof of his honesty the Norwegian sailor offered Casement the earnest money he had received in return for a promise to keep the British agent in Christiana informed of everything that happened in Germany. Christensen had to repeat the tale before Oberndorff who came to see Casement in his hotel bedroom. Suddenly another visitor was announced Herr Richard Meyer, brother of Professor Kuno Meyer, who had just landed form America having made a voyage as a stoker. Christensen was sent back to the British Legation to say he was willing to accept the reward and to inform the Minister that he would be going to Copenhagen by the evening train. He was to offer to go with Sir Roger wherever he went and report on his movements. Christensen returned just before it was time to go to the station and gave a full account of his alleged interview with Mr. Finley. He had agreed on his word of honour to pay Christensen £5,000 if he could put Sir Roger in his power. It was also agreed that the Norwegian should be paid for any letters he could steal or copy. They were to be sent to the address indicated by the Minister. Mr Finley pulled out a note for one hundred kronen saying, “You have given me no real information. You have not told me anything I do not know.”

This story made Casement more nervous than ever as he drove to the railway station where Richard Meyer was to meet him by appointment. It would be terrible to be intercepted at this stage just as he was on the point of doing a big thing for Ireland. They booked tickets for Copenhagen with the intention of changing during the night into the Sassnitz section. Casement was the prey of constant anxiety until they reached Engleholm. With great relief they got into an another carriage and travelled where they changed carriages and with great relief joined Herr Meyer who was travelling via Tralleborg to Sassnitz. At Sassnitz there was a little trouble and Sir Roger complained of being searched by “clumsy reservists.” Richard Meyer, however, was friendly and helpful, and together they climbed into a first-class carriage which was boarded at Stralsund by two Prussian Junkers, patriots of the first water. Staring icily at Casement they spoke of the amazing insolence of any Englishman daring to come to Germany at such a time. Finally they decided to call the guard and have the villain thrown out. At this point Meyer intervened and informed the two irate officers that their fellow passenger was an American gentleman — Mr. Hammond of New York (Mr. Landy having been conveniently shed at the frontier!) This pacified the Junkers, and Mr. Hammond proceeded on his journey without further annoyance.

“It is not every day,” wrote Casement in the preface to his diary, “that an Irishman commits high treason, especially one who has been earned fame In the service of the King sovereign he discards and not with honour and some fame in that service”. Referring to “Colonel” Arthur Lynch's trial he says, “I little thought that I should go the whole hog myself — and not to a little Boer Republic that had once been British territory but to the mightiest military Power in Europe, whose war to the death with England meant destruction to one or other of the combatants. Lynch's treason was that of an individual… mine is the premeditated, clearly thought-out treason not of an individual but of a representative of a people still remembering its past.” Thus did Casement sum up his mission to Germany before he left for home etc. [p. 4 in note]

4. INSIDE GERMANY

Arrived in Berlin, “Mr. Hammond” shut himself up at the Continental Hotel. Meyer impressed on him that he would be wise to remain indoors as it would never do for him to be heard talking English in the street. He could neither speak nor understand German and felt very miserable in his isolation. Richard Meyer said that he had given out that the stranger was a millionaire with a big yacht but nothing seemed to follow this announcement. His existence apparently interested no one for no arrangements of any kind had been made for him in advance. “At last in Berlin.” He wrote in his diary, “The journey done, — the effort perhaps only begun. Shall I succeed … will they see the great cause aright and understand all it may mean to them, no less than to Ireland?” Without knowledge of Germany, Germans or German, without introductions and without plans, the “self-constituted representative of Ireland” was disposed, naturally enough, to mope. Meyer cheered him up by persuading him that in spite of the apathy and want of  p.29 interest which appeared to surround his arrival, he was really a most welcome guest in Germany. He was sorry to have to tell him that both the Imperial Chancellor Bethmann Holweg, and the Secretary of State von Jago … were with the Kaiser at Imperial General Headquarters at Charleville. Zimmermann, the Under-Secretary, was in charge of the Foreign Office and would no doubt see Sir Roger immediately. Meyer's information made him feel “quite happy” again and with renewed confidence he ventured to walk out into the streets with an American flag in his buttonhole. Dr. Rothenfelder says that he had friends in Germany, but there is no evidence for this in Dr. Curry's narrative. Except for Count Blücher, whom he had known in Africa, he appears to have been quite friendless.

His only confidant was Christensen and this adventurous and imaginative youth continued to figure for some time in Casement's story, especially in the Findlay episode which despite the momentary character of the main interest was drawn out to great length by the sailor, who was intent on providing British intelligence agents with good copy. Through his stimulation the episode became magnified beyond measure in Casement's imagination. In spite  p.30 of the disparity of station which proved a definite obstacle in Casement's progress, Christensen, the servant, succeeded in persuading his master to compose letters hinting at “plots”, at “friends in Germany prepared to go to all lengths”, “secret organizations”; “American help,” “conspiracies among Indians,” “landing of troops,” “sowing of mine fields” and moreover managed to dominate Casement to the pitch of playing this odd game in his own odd way, Findlay having given him a code in which only every fourth word was to count. For example:
“I hope you have long since quite got over your illness; good friends have written letters of recommendation also giving us many new names. I am soon sending all the money through Bank or the Post Office. It is very difficult for me to give mother the money quickly and you would advise her best as I cannot write soon; am too busy and broke up with cold. Send her and father plenty greetings and that money.
I will have to close. Your friend, Adler.”

Casement was also set down by him his employee to write letters which Christensen was to “steal” in order to sell them in Norway. The epistles contrived by the pair are in many are almost too silly to quote; but it is evident they were intended for publication.

One or two extracts from the letters will show their characteristics. They were written just at the time when British soldiers were being killed in holocausts round Ypres, but with complete disregard of this fact England was charged  p.31 with standing out of the battle while getting:
“Japanese, Russians, Indians, Irish, Belgians, French and God knows who beside to fight for them … if they were only brave and manly much could be forgiven them … but this miserable care for their own skin while they try to get Germany's throat cut by paid bullies, and conquer a people in arms by black lies and silver bullets, this makes me ill … This people (the German) has but one heart and that is at the front.” ⁴

“That inflated ass Winston, as you will remember, began the war with an appeal to Christianity against Germany, because it laid mines along the North Sea coast. Now they lay them not only along the coastline but up to the Faroe Islands! … Naturally they have long since sown the Irish Sea with mines … a convincing proof how much they rely on Irish loyalty.” ⁵

The composition of these documents kept both men busy. On the 14th November a letter purporting to give instructions and information was written:
“The campaign in our support should be prepared by the New Year. By that time the Canadians will have sent their best people, their picked men over here … The German Irish alliance will conquer the Entente.” ⁶ And yet again:-
“We must push our part of the pact through and carry the war into Africa …” ⁷  p.32 Casement adds that he has worked hard to get everything ready both on land and sea and that by the beginning of January (1915) there should be 60,000 men with ful equipment ready to sail for an unspecified destination.

Apparently Sir Roger Casement was pleased with the way these news bulletins read for he said that they ought at least make Findlay's [sic] hair stand up — at any rate what was left of it! By degrees he became even bolder in statement venturing on still more graphic statements and pretending to be directly concerned with the training of an expeditionary force.

“The major,” he writes, “whom you know is now my staff officer in the camp … one of the best officers of their General Staff will be sent as leader … One of the people who will accompany me is a naval officer whom I knew years ago — he was then a captain — and now he is one of their leading sailors … The Audacious was a good beginning but only a beginning …”. ⁸

These communications were duly “stolen” and taken by Adler Christensen to Norway. Nonsensical as his letters are they serve to give an idea of the kind of dreams Casement was addicted to. On paper he could make anything happen, but as an executive he was powerless. He must have been weak too for he allowed himself to be jockeyed into writing these letters, though his better judgment and his gentlemanly instincts must have made him dislike doing so. He had  p.33 rather a bad jolt when adverse police reports on Christensen reached him in December. “I am not sure of Adler,” he wrote in his journal, “he confesses he admires Finley. Finley is a man, he would roll these God d——d Germans up.” ⁹ Adler had come to despise and hate the Germans. Though his Casement's confidence was shaken, he continued to support Christensen for as long as his means permitted. When they failed, the man was shipped back managed to support himself and later returned to the United States. Just before Casement left Germany in April 1916, the German General Staff informed him that Christensen had turned traitor to him. It was no shock to his employer who merely remarked that he knew it already. Despite his disloyalty and lack of education, Christensen's shrewdness must in a sense have been valuable to his master for he had warned him of what was obvious enough, that he was being fooled by the Germans. Frequently he insisted that Findlay's mind was superior to that of any of the officials of the Berlin Foreign Office. Casement would counter this by saying that all the really good German diplomats had joined the navy or the army and had gone to the front.

When Casement arrived in Berlin he was naturally disappointed to find that the principal Secretaries of State were in attendance on the Emperor at Charleville. Richard Meyer however lost no time in arranging an interview for  p.34 Casement with the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Herr Zimmermann ¹⁰ On the occasion of this visit Casement was very much impressed. He describes how a servant relieved Meyer and himself of hat, coat and stick and showed them into a waiting-room and how after a short time Meyer left him to himself to watch cavalry officers in field grey pass to and fro through the apartment. It gave Casement a real thrill to find himself sitting on a sofa right in the middle, as it were, of the German political web. He felt no fear but kept his thoughts on Ireland and assured himself that even if his mission failed, even if Germany were in the end beaten, his conduct at any rate must alter the whole course of English action towards his country.

“The Irish question,” he said to himself, “will be raised from the dust and dirt of English politics to an international atmosphere, and it is I who will have accomplished it … By one bold act of treason I shall have done more than Redmond and Company with all their years of speechifying. England has never troubled about the orthodox Irish patriot, she has taken his measure long since. She will fear an Irishman who acts but does not talk, for she takes notice of action and respects deeds …”

On this wise Casement's thoughts coursed along. Of what use, he asked himself, were the talkers who had slain England again and again? Here was he hitting out with his  p.35 “clenched fist” in a blow of “sincere enmity” … “Grey and Asquith are the real traitors. They have surely betrayed their country and her true interests to glut the greedy jealousy of the British commercial mind. Germany's sin has been her efficiency … For that so-called Liberal administration I have nothing but unmeasured contempt, a scorn I cannot express and for the governing classes too of the “pirate realm”.” He recalled with satisfaction a remark Mr. Wilfred Blunt had made to him once at New Building: “The time has come to break up the British Empire.” Together they agreed that it was a monstrosity. Surely the world would be better, freer and a less hypocritical place after a German victory. And here he was in process of breaking up the British Empire: it seemed almost too good to be true! These musings were presently interrupted by the announcement that the Under-secretary was ready to receive him.

In Herr Zimmermann Casement found a genial, bearded person disposed to take a great interest in the Findlay affair. “Falsche Hunde!” he exclaimed, “they always do that sort of thing and will go on doing it where their interests are at stake. They stick at nothing!” He spoke for all the world as if no other Government had ever dreamed of offering money rewards for the apprehension of persons they wanted to put under lock and key.

 p.36 The ashes of this affair have been very carefully raked over by Dr. Curry, but the German Foreign Office, after examining Casement and Christensen, were not disposed to believe that any British Minister would deal directly with Casement's servant. It was officially suggested to Casement that he had better drop both Christensen and his plot, but this did not meet with Sir Roger's approval. He determined to carry on his course and “try and help poor Adler to lead a better life.” Since the German Government refused to make use of the story it was in the end sent to America together with a photograph of the letter offering a reward for the apprehension of Sir Roger Casement, which Christensen stated was written with Mr. Findlay's own hand. In America it was used by the press as anti-British propaganda though both Kuno Meyer and Bernstorff were against this course.

Herr Zimmermann's welcome was so sympathetic that Casement felt encouraged to produce a memorandum on the anti-German recruiting propaganda put about by the British Government in Ireland as Herr Zimmermann must realize it was pure calumny and Germany surely should not leave such statements unanswered, she must in justice define her attitude towards Ireland. The shades of Wolfe Tone and Napper Tandy must have stood behind his chair as the historic litany of Irish patriots was once  p.37 more rapped out in a foreign capital. Drawing from his pocket a draft of what in his opinion it would be politic to say, he read it aloud, Herr Zimmermann nodded acquiescence at every paragraph and in the end said, “I agree entirely.” He took the paper from his visitor's hand, murmured a few kind words of farewell and closed the interview. Casement then found himself whisked off by Meyer to see Graf George von Wedel, at that time head of the English section of the Foreign Office. In him Casement found an attractive personality, eager to listen to other proposals of his drafting which this time consisted of suggestions for tampering with the loyalty of Irish soldiers in German prison camps. With the Count he discussed the ten articles he had drawn up for the formation and use of an Irish Brigade. Once more the ghosts of Irish patriots have bowed approval of their lineal heir for he was not treading in the footsteps of Wolfe Tone who in his day had attempted by proclamation to seduce the Irish sailors in the King's navy.

Meyer, with whom he had already discussed this project, which had gradually defined itself into a scheme or plan, had said with enthusiasm that it would be worth ten army corps to Germany. Casement had been careful to explain to him that though every Irishman would put his head in a noose for Ireland, his ideas of honour were such that he would never  p.38 desert crudely to an enemy. It was therefore absolutely necessary for Germany to make a declaration showing that Ireland would benefit by their action. If only that could be done Casement said he had no doubt his men would follow him in mobs. And what had Wolfe Tone said in his memorial to the Directorate of France in February 1796? Why, that he was confidant 500,000 Irishmen would fly to the banner of the Republic if it were raised in Ireland. The hospitality of the Bishop of Killala and the round up at Ballinamuck soon demonstrated to the French how vain was the patriot's dream. Count von Wedel looked curiously at his visitor, was he really in his right mind? Could he believe that any soldiers of the original British Expeditionary Force would listen to him for a moment? Perhaps it took an Irishman to understand Irishmen!

Casement propounded another and indirect way of approaching the prisoners, an original way unused by his predecessors but which might produce great results. Would it not be advisable to attach Nationalist priests to the prison camps to activate any latent love for Ireland, or even hatred for England? At the time Casement made this suggestion for seducing soldiers from their allegiance he was not a Catholic, for he came of a Protestant Ulster family and made no  p.39 profession of Catholicism until some days before his death. He had the Ulsterman's idea of the political power of priests, and was mightily disillusioned when he found out later on that the prophets he caused to be summoned from Rome confined themselves to spiritual advice and did not countenance the breaking of oaths. Graf von Wedel assured Casement that he now understood the situation perfectly. “The proclamation first of all,” he said, “that is clear,” and turning to Meyer he gave instructions that Sir Roger should be given a special permit and be kept under efficient police protection, “not alone from the British, but from our own people.” In this polite and apparently complimentary manner Casement, who was regarded by many people in Germany as an English spy, was kept under perpetual observation. Farewells then took place, and Sir Roger left the office feeling how understanding and helpful German officials were. That evening a card reached him from the Chief of the Political Police stating that Mr Hammond of New York was not to be molested. It is obvious that Count von Wedel reported the result of his interview to his chief adding a rider to the effect that he had some difficulty in estimating precisely the value of the  p.40 help tendered to Germany by this strange Irishman. A few days later Casement was summoned to an interview with Bethmann-Hollweg and left his hotel amidst deeply-bowing servants to be escorted by two officers to Imperial General Headquarters at Charleville.

It is a thousand pities that Dr. Curry gives no detailed account of the three extremely busy days spent by Casement at Imperial General Headquarters. He was interviewed by several officers and men of position, who no doubt as students of Realpolitik found the Irish visionary to be a very unusual person. They seem to have summed him up as an individual of little importance, but at the same time they took into account the possibility that if Christensen's story was even in a minor degree reliable, the Findlay affair might be used to create prejudice somewhere, and if an Irish Brigade could be formed it would have the effect of vastly annoying England, though it could do no possible good to  p.41 Germany. The first therefore went forth to the press that Sir Roger Casement was to be boomed, and that declarations of friendship for Ireland should be circulated for publication. On Friday, 20th November, Sir Roger arrived back in Berlin and saw his own name in large type in the Berliner Zeitung. Every evening paper starred him, and the Continental Times of the same date printed the gist of his talk with Graf von Wedel. It was stated that the well-known Irish Nationalist, Sir Roger Casement, had been received at the Foreign Office and had there described the anti-German propaganda circulating in Ireland which was intended to make the people of that country fear the baneful influences of a German victory. This must be denied; Germans were the friends of Ireland.

“If in this Great War, which Germany did not will, German troops should have the happiness of landing in Ireland, they would not land as an army of oppressors to plunder and destroy but as troops of a Government wishing Ireland national freedom, national development, and inspired by nothing but good will to their institutions.”

On the evening of his return Graf von Wedel asked Casement to call at the Foreign Office that he might read him a telegram from the German envoy at the Vatican. The telegram stated that through the assistance of Monsignor O'Riordan of the Irish College in Rome, the Nationalist priests O'Gorman and  p.42 Crotty, would be sent to work amongst the Irish soldiers in the prison camps. The promptness and efficiency of the German Government simply amazed Casement: here was everything happening exactly as he had wished. Delighted with the news, he begged to be allowed to go to the prison camps himself in order to explain his scheme to the interned men. Graf von Wedel agreed it might be an advisable step to take in the near future, but that it would take a little time for matters “to be arranged.” We know from other sources what this arrangement consisted in. Irish prisoners were taken out of the various camps to which they had been allotted on capture and were assembled at Limburg-on-the-Lahn. This it was thought must facilitate Casement's “mission”, as it would create an all-Irish atmosphere in the camp. Casement was to visit the prisoners under his own name.

The priests from Rome arrived in Berlin at the end of November and Casement saw them on  p.43 the 30th. He has recorded that in Father O'Gorman he found “a devoted Nationalist;” in Father Crotty “a raging Fenian”. In both men he discovered a firm resolve to carry out the strict instructions they had receive to confine their activities in camps to spiritual work. As an Ulster Protestant he felt the gulf that yawned between himself and the Catholic Irish of the South, — a gulf of ignorance as well as one of complete misunderstanding of the relative importance of spiritual as compared with political values. He wrote of the tow priests in his diary, “They are to be entirely non-political. The question is: will they?”

A fortnight after the arrival of the chaplains, Casement learnt of what he called “the British counter stroke,” the appointment by the British Foreign Office of a representative to the Holy See. “I have actually forced them,” he wrote, “to a step hateful to every good Englishman — to reverse the Reformation!” thus reveling an ignorance of the English as complete as his revelation of his ignorance of Catholicism shortly before.

Once he had ceased to be Mr. Hammond and had turned into the well-known Irish Nationalist, Sir Roger Casement was  p.44 to some extent lionized. Women clamoured to meet him. Princess Pless was denied a visit since she was not of Irish birth. The German ladies to whom he accorded interviews found him charming, there was something lovable and dependent about him. To them he was so obviously a lost dog, and his gratitude for kindness made it irresistible to befriend him. To some women he read poems, to others he sang songs of Ireland and to all he gave the impression of gentleness and fire. Count Gebhardt Blücher, an old South African friend, who at this time was living at the Esplanade Hotel talked to him by the hour of old days in Africa. Casement found Countess Blücher sympathy etic and glad to talk English again. He spoke to her of some of his plans but the only idea that seemed to appeal to her at all was that of meeting English-speaking priests. An exile is always glad to hear the language of home. At any rate she was kind to him and evidently liked him as nearly all women did. “I am so glad that Father Crotty is coming,” she says in a note, “He will be a great help to you … Please see that he looks me up … I want very much to see you before you leave  p.45 but I don't know if it would be wise. We are all watched in these days. You have so very much my sympathy and I will pray for you.”

Sometimes he found that Count Blücher's friends were not inclined to take Ireland very seriously. Count Larisch for instance lunched with him to talk about Ireland. He was a sportsman who had stayed with the Duke of Manchester at Kylemore and had visited Achill. He said he liked the Irish people they were so amusing and full of jokes, but how could a man like Count Larisch understand his people; he knew nothing of Irish history and had no notion of all that lay at the back of Kylemore and Achill.

The month of December 1914 was mainly spent by Casement in trying to think out plans for creating an Irish Brigade, and in the second week of December he paid a preliminary visit to Limburg with Father Crotty, returning from there to Berlin on the 10th. Count Blücher, who really talked sense, had the honesty to tell Casement some disagreeable home truths. He even repeated to him criticisms that had reached his ears and strongly urged him before proceeding  p.46 further with his self-appointed task, to make quite sure he was not making a fool of himself. Count Blücher knew, for example, that Herr von Jagow thought little of his Irish friend or his project and that the Imperial German Government would never make itself ridiculous on his account. Casement paid no attention to these well-meant hints. His only comment is that the Count's interest in Ireland is just “nil.” It does not seem to have occurred to him that this may have been because his friend was a German aristocrat and in this representative of the ruling class in Germany which was most unlikely to be in sympathy with underdogs in Ireland or anywhere else.

Something however made Casement think twice over the advice tendered to him by his German friend and apply for immediate interviews with Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg and Foreign Secretary Jagow. If they refused to see him. he would take it as a sign that it was not worthwhile to go on with his scheme. “I will not,” he wrote, “take the responsibility of involving some thousands of Irish soldiers in High Treason until I get precise and reliable assurances for them as well as for the political future of Ireland.” This sentence shows that he knew precisely the name by which  p.46a his activities would be known in England, indeed everywhere outside Ireland and Irish circles abroad. It also shows his inexperience was such that he believed Irish soldiers would respond readily to his appeal. In the event of his being refused interviews by the Chancellor and Foreign Secretary, he made up his mind to quit Germany for Scandinavia.

In his role of moderator, Count Blücher took Casement to see Dr. Solf, the Colonial Secretary, who welcomed the Irishman kindly enough. At one time Dr. Solf had been Governor of Samoa; he also knew Nigeria well, so had much in common with his visitor. “I told him,” said Casement, “that Germany must give Britain a “knock-out blow,” but that she would require all her wits to do it.” Dr. Solf observed that he knew Germans were not in the same street as Englishmen as far as diplomacy went. “They have a long record as sea-robbers — pirates that is what they are,” interjected Casement. “Pirates in dress clothes,” said the Minister laughing politely at the joking definition. He went on to explain that though it had never been the policy of his Government to interfere with the domestic affairs of another country, it might well be that a German declaration of sympathy with Ireland would open up quite a new line of foreign policy, a line that he himself had initiated in making a friendly official gesture to South Africa. He then suddenly enquired how it was that Ireland had never before made advances to Germany. Casement replied that it was an oversight, of course an Irish-German policy  p.47 should have formed part of Ireland's plan of defence against England. On this rather unsatisfactory note, the interview petered out in kindly farewells. “In my heart I am very sorry I came … I do not think the German Government has any soul for great enterprises — it lacks the divine spark that has ennobled British piracy. The seas may be freed by these people.., but I doubt it. They will do it in their sleep … and without intending to achieve anything so great.” ¹¹ Five days later Casement had another opportunity of putting the cause of Ireland in an attractive light before a very important man, this time the Chancellor of the Reich himself. With some excitement he presented himself at Herr von Bethmann Hollweg's Chancellery. As he entered the room a figure in grey uniform rose and shook him warmly by the hand. Cigarettes were lighted and the talk began, Bethmann Hollweg using French and his visitor English. The independence of Ireland and the formation of an Irish Brigade were discussed. Casement said the latter would deal a heavy blow at recruiting in Ireland, and the Chancellor admitted that possibly the assembling of such a Brigade might be of service, but more as a means of diverting troops to Ireland and causing England, the champion of small nations, to treat a small nation harshly. He also said that as France could not last out, Germany could not be beaten, no matter what efforts England made. The war  p.48 must end with a peace laid down by Germany, if not indeed dictated by her. He had never doubted for a moment that England, though she did not want the war, would come in on some other pretext if not on that of Belgian neutrality. This interview, though agreeable and friendly, was hardly more fruitful of result than that with Dr Solf.

At no time did Casement ask himself what Germans would think of a man who set out to make soldiers desert their colours. Before he left Germany however, he was to learn from the lips of German officers exactly what they thought of him and his dupes.

In The Times of December 4th, 1914 which he read about this time, a New York telegram was published giving Dr. Dernburg's verbal outline of the peace terms that would be acceptable to Germany. The ninth condition was that all little nations such as Finns, Poles and Boers should have the right to self-government while the Egyptians, if they so desired, should go back to Turkey. Casement was greatly irritated by this declaration, and called on Graf von Wedel to express surprise that the Irish had been left out “though Ireland had done more for Germany than either Poland or Finland.” The Under-Secretary courteously suggested that the terms might not be correctly reported and that it was not impossible that Dr. Dernburg had never made a statement of the kind attributed to him by the American journalist. Casement had to retire from the interview discomfited.

In a diary entry written between St. Patrick's Day, 1916 and the date of his embarkation for Ireland, Casement alludes to a German-Irish Agreement signed on December 28th, 1914, which he evidently thought to be of considerable value. In this document was laid down what the function and privileges of an Irish Brigade were to be. To begin with the Brigade was to be used solely for Irish, not German ends, and in the event of the seas being freed by a German Naval victory, the Brigade, strengthened by German officers and men, was to go to Ireland. If this move proved successful, Germany was to recognize an independent Irish Government and give it “the fullest moral support.” In the event of it not being possible to send an expedition to Ireland, the Brigade would be sent to Egypt.

About Christmas 1914, Casement paid a visit to the Civilian Camp situated on the Ruhleben trotting track just outside Berlin. Ostensibly he went there to interview Irishmen but we have no record of the visit except that he caught a cold which laid him up. He, however, was instrumental in securing the release from that dank spot of an Irish Eurasian, Dr. Chatterton Hill, who afterwards worked at journalism in Berlin. In 1916 an article by this man was published under the title or Irland und seine Bedeutung für Europa in which he described  p.50 Ireland as the key of the Atlantic and the corner stone of the British Empire. One day after his release he was talking to Casement about the Irish in America whom he said were quite “apathetic,” it might be a good thing if he were set on a mission to wake them up. Sir Roger took offence at this and told him with emphasis that they needed no stimulus since they were pro-German to the last man.

By the end of December 1914 all Irish prisoners of war had been concentrated in the camp of Limburg-on-the-Lahn. The scene in short had been set for the miserable business of recruiting an Irish Brigade. Somehow Sir Roger never for one moment contemplated failing with the men. It was as if he were walking in a dream to fulfil an antique prophecy, to carry out something laid upon him —

1. A dream! A dream! An ancient dream!
   Yet ere peace come to Innisfail
   Some weapons on some field must gleam,
   Some burning glory fire the Gael.

It may be that in his mind were pictures of Fontenoy and visions of Clare's dragoons. Thoughts of Humbert's expedition certainly occurred to him for he jested of his “Wolfe-Tone Landing.” Whatever his ideas, whatever his hopes they were smashed and battered out of shape by the first visit to Limburg Camp.

 p.51 Irish Guards, Royal Irish Rifles, Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, Royal Dublin Fusiliers, Royal Munster Fusiliers, Connaught Rangers, North Irish Horse and South Irish Horse, what sort of response could he have expected from men of regiments like this? Even Germans thought it mad and bad to try and get men to break their soldier's oath. Nearly all the prisoners were men of the old Regular Army — some of the N.C.O's had ten years' service; not good material for the experiments of an amateur treason monger.

There were some 10,000 British prisoners of war at Sennelager. Fifteen hundred Irish were sorted out from these and addressed by a German officer who adjured them to remember the “Wild Geese” and MacBride's brigade. Ireland had been enthralled for eight hundred years, Germany would set her free. At once the Irish prisoners began to receive preferential treatment. When the Bishop of Paderborn visited them, he hoped they would be happier and better off in the new camp to which they were being transferred. The effect of all this on the Irish men was to cause them to draw up a memorial thanking His Majesty the Emperor for his consideration and declining any concessions or favourable treatment unless shared by the remainder of the prisoners for “in addition to being Irish Catholics, we have the honour to be British soldiers.”

The protest did them honour in the sight of the Germans, all the same they were transferred by edict to Limburg.

 p.52 The first time Casement went to Limburg Camp he was accompanied by the ex-ambasador Baron Marshal von Bilberstein.  ¹³

He addressed some N.C.O's in a nervous speech and with him was a German orderly carrying copies of the Continental Times, containing Germany's message of good-will to Ireland. These he distributed together with some numbers of The Gaelic American and a little book of his own entitled Crimes against Ireland. An additional appeal was made to the men by a printed proclamation affixed to the walls of the hutments. For this his friends say he was not responsible: it is alleged to have been drafted by two Irishmen, Connolly and Joseph Plunkett who had arrived in Germany from Switzerland in November 1914 and who left again in February 1915. Casement saw “Mr. Peters” alias Joseph Plunkett co-editor of the Irish Review at the Hotel Bristol, Berlin and told him what he was doing about the Irish Brigade. It does not really matter who drafted the proclamation. Casement would have subscribed to all its clauses.

Irishmen!

Here is a chance for you to fight for Ireland!

You have fought for England, your country's hereditary enemy.

You have fought for Belgium, in England's interest, though it was no more to you than the Fiji Islands!

Are you willing to fight for your own country?

With a view to securing the National Freedom of Ireland, with the moral and material assistance of the German Government, an Irish Brigade is being formed.

The object of the Irish Brigade shall be to fight solely for the cause of Ireland, and under no circumstances shall it be directed to any German end.

 p.53

The Irish Brigade shall be formed and shall fight under the Irish flag alone; the men shall wear a special, distinctively Irish uniform and have Irish officers.

The Irish Brigade shall be clothed, fed and efficiently equipped with arms and ammunition by the German Government. It will be stationed near Berlin, and be treated as guests of the German Government. At the end of the war, the German Government undertakes to send each member of the Brigade, who may so desire it, to the United States of America, with the necessary means to land. The Irishmen in America are collecting money for the Brigade. Those men who do not join the Irish Brigade will be removed from Limburg and distributed among other camps.

If interested — see your company commanders.

Join the Irish Brigade and win Ireland's independence!

Remember Bachelor's Walk!

God Save Ireland!

Standing one day on a table in a barrack room at Limburg Camp, Casement urged the men to join the Irish Brigade: “Why live any longer in hunger and misery,” he asked, “when you can join the Brigade I am about to form?” ¹⁵. The men were suspicious of him from the beginning, and they did not become less so as he offered them material advantages, £10 on joining, a brand new uniform, and in the event of the war ending in a less satisfactory manner than he hoped, a free passage to America. Some of the men were not a little  p.54 puzzled at being told the Germans were very like the Irish and the Irish very like the Germans; that had not been their own experience.

On one of his visits he left behind him a book which those joining the Brigade were to sign, and on signing to become free men. Even the promise of liberty, the dearest thing in the world to prisoners, did not make these men swerve in their allegiance. They proved themselves as fundamentally decent as other soldiers of the British Army, and out of two thousand, five hundred men but fifty-six put up their names to join. His enterprise was fantastic. He may have counted on addressing peasants but among his audience were numerous competent and high-minded warrant and non-commissioned officers, men far more competent than Casement. It must have been exceedingly humiliating for Sir Roger Casement to be hissed and booed by the crowd and roughly pushed about by the Munster Fusiliers and other Irish soldiers. Casement, who had not reckoned on such a reception, nervously swung the umbrella he carried on his arm in a circle to ward off other blows. To those who hissed him he said: “You are followers of Johnnie Redmond, the recruiting sergeant of the British Army” In return they shouted, “Traitor!”

The few men who joined the Brigade disappeared from the Camp for a time to reappear in “Irish uniform” — grey tunics  p.55 with green collars badged with harp and shamrock. A story went the rounds that when the volunteers reached Berlin they were given an evening out and after getting gloriously drunk lurched down Unter den Linden roaring “Rule Britannia.” Such an opportunity did not occur again! The jovial revellers lived behind barbed wire for the rest of their time in Germany.

When they returned to Limburg, they were received with jeers and when the unconverted were marched up in batches to hear what the renegades had to say, for themselves and their cause, they found themselves regarded as a joke. “It was no use” as one of them said “trying to make these fellows believe anything we said!” As the weeks passed resentment took the place of good humour, they were booed and hissed and were quickly transferred by the camp authorities to the Russian lines. The Russians scrapped into these privileged beings who in the end were transferred to Zossen, a camp tenanted by all the coloured savages of the Allied Armies. There they lived in what they called a “bird-cage” barracks in a space fifty yards long by twenty five wide enclosed by barbed wire.

Thus as a man Casement was easily moved both to exaltation and depression, and we find him writing to Meyer in the first week of January 1915 that he had no hope of moving the soldiers to any course whatever. By the end of the second week, he has “as good as given up the idea of forming and Irish Brigade” and feels that there is no point in remaining in Germany. He alludes to the “gigantic disappointment” in which the failure of his plan has overwhelmed him, and naturally thinks it will invalidate any other suggestions he may have made to the German Government. Having given up all hope that Father O'Gorman and Father Crotty would further his plans for prisoners, he fell back on a suggestion that which probably emanated from Clan-na-Gael that it might be helpful to bring Germany a priest from America. Presently Casement learnt that a Father Nicholson from Philadelphia was about to arrive in Germany and he began to hope the newcomer might accomplish what he had failed to do. Father  p.56 John Nicholson of Philadelphia travelling by way of Naples and passing through Rome arrived in Germany unhampered by any special restrictions and it is not to be supposed that spontaneously he observed any in his ministrations to the prisoners of Limburg Camp. In the last week of January 1915, he put in an appearance at the camp and corresponding with his entry there is the exit of Father O'Gorman who withdrew contemporaneously to Rome. Thus the unfettered Father Nicholson took the place of the handicapped Father O'Gorman. One day we may learn to whom this substitution was due and how precisely it operated. The idea got about among the men that he was either not a priest at all or an anti-British agent.

Prisoners announced that they would not go to any mass conducted by him and Father Crotty had great difficulty in combating this boycott. Casement liked Father Nicholson and made a confidant of him.

Casement returned to Berlin on the 23rd January 1915 ¹⁶, wishing to God that he had never set foot in Germany. Things were not in the least as he had assumed them to be. The men, for example, were partly Protestant but whatever their religion he found his name meant absolutely nothing to them. They simply did not understand what he was getting at. In a flash he realized that as a private person he carried no weight with anyone and that all his previous successes and prestige had been won because he had British official support behind him. In consequence of the adulation he had received in London after the Putumayo Report was out and the flattery of certain  p.57 Nationalists who called him a leader of men, he had begun to think of himself as greater than his office, he now found that without his office he was nothing at all and represented nothing. With this revelation his outlook changed, he began to feel himself “merely the tool of unscrupulous officials;” he fancied men whispered ugly words about him, he was shadowed, and like many of us when failure comes, he was disposed to blame everyone but himself.

On the 24th of January we find him in Berlin wondering what immediate steps he can take to become an American citizen. On the 25th and 26th he discussed the formation of an Irish Brigade with Father Nicholson and on the evening of the latter day saw this American priest off at the railway station on his first visit to Limburg. Then quite suddenly he decided to go to Norway to await events. Much to his annoyance he found that the timetables of the mail boats had been altered because of the activities of a British submarine in the Baltic. Though no objection was raised by Meyer or any official to Casement's departure, he found it was not so easy to get away and it was a great surprise when he and Adler Christensen were provided gratuitously with an escort of three detectives “armed to the teeth.” This in itself made him think things over. Could there be some definite though unspecified risk in the journey, he had so  p.58 casually decided on. It was startling to be told by Richard Meyer that the Admiralty wished him to be warned of the possibility of his being taken off the mail boat as an English prisoner of war. He said he would fight to the death rather than be captured and then enquired of Meyer “Would the detectives also fight?” “Certainly,” replied Meyer, “they will also fight to the death.” Rather disturbed in mind he set out with his escort to Sassnitz and then in some mysterious way began to feel overwhelmed by the far-reaching power of England. It was hardly worthwhile to pit himself against the strength of the British Empire. By the time he arrived at the port he was anxious to take the train for Berlin again. Informing the three detectives that he proposed cancelling the expedition, he telegraphed to the German Foreign Office to say he was returning to Berlin. A day or two later he went to stay at Potsdam but was quickly scared away by the unfriendly reception he met with at the Palast Hotel when he began talking English. Back in Berlin he set himself to compose a letter to Sir Edward Grey drawing attention to the reward that had been offered, presumably by the British Government, for his arrest or disappearance, and circulated copies of this document to foreign embassies and legations. Casement excited himself greatly over this letter thinking it must have a great effect but like the rest of his imagined bombshells, it proved in practice a damp squib.

Feeling ill, disillusioned and anxious, he retreated  p.59 into a sanitorium in the Grunewald, where in solitude he realized only too acutely that he had made “an awful ass of himself.” Everything to do with German officialdom had by this time become anathema to him and he contrasts the British Foreign Office “so ably run” by men like Sir William Tyrrel and Mr. Gregory, with the “miserably conducted Auswärtiges Amt” of the Wilhelmstrasse. From regarding himself as the representative of a live national movement, he now feels himself to be but the tool of a “stupid,” “self-seeking,” unscrupulous government.

Towards the end of February Casement went to Hamburg for a change of air and while there arranged with Ballin to ship Christensen to America. He also discussed with him the future of the Irish ports. St. Partick's Day found him back in Berlin, and in bed. The rest of the year 1915 was mainly spent in Bavaria, first at Munich where at the Bayerische Hof he made acquaintance with Dr. Curry in May and later when they had become intimate friends at Riederau by the Ammersee, where Dr. Curry and his family were spending the summer. Sometimes he said the country reminded him of Ireland. The kindly Bavarian peasants were greatly to his liking, and if he can be said to have been at peace anywhere it was here. Among the people he saw something of at this time were Izzet Pasha and Prince Hassan, as well as German acquaintances made in Munich. The diaries for these months owing to Dr. Curry's discretion have not been published, and we do not even know what Casement was thinking about Ireland. It is unlikely that he was planning anything for he had nothing  p.60 to plan with and was not in touch, so far as the evidence goes, with either Clan-na-Gael or the Irish Republican Executive. It was melancholy to reflect that the sole result of his contriving up to date had been the segregation of a handful of Irish shirkers who were leading an undisciplined existence in a camp at Zossen. He had shot his bolt, it had hit nothing, and there can have been no real consolation to be derived from all the kindness shown him in Bavaria, for Ireland was his only real interest, and it obviously was nobody else's.

In December 1915 he went to stay at the Golden Lion at Zossen where his Irish Brigade in their strange uniform were caged along with Indians and other wastage of war. A “Lieutenant” Monteith, who had arrived from Ireland via America in October 1915, was in charge of them but he reported the men to be “bitterly disappointed and downhearted” and Sir Roger had no words to cheer them. He had been promised that the volunteers would be trained as machine gunners, but here they were in a dreadful state of disillusion at being treated merely as prisoners of war. As the British Fleet was still afloat and there seemed to be no chance of their being sent to Ireland, Casement on his return to Berlin begged that “the Brigade” should be dispatched to the east in fulfillment of “a promise repeatedly made” by the German General Staff. Egypt was the place selected by Sir Roger, but the  p.61 word Syria was mentioned by the Germans as more practicable. Enver Pasha, it was said, had agreed to the arrangement. He waited for a decision but the German authorities made no move, so sick “at heart and soul — in mind and body” he went off on the 19th of January 1916 to the Neu-Wittelsbach Sanatorium in Munich for a rest cure.

Occasionally Dr. Curry lifts the curtain of darkness which shrouded him in this nursing home and shows him as receiving, for example, letters from Countess Blücher, asking him to re-write her “Memoirs” and proposing to send him a weekly packet of manuscript to correct. In the event of him consenting to “embellish” and “animate” her record, she offered to give him a percentage of the money she hoped the book would eventually earn.

In another letter she writes: “I am so glad that you will help me with my memoirs …” and two days later when she posts her first installment to him at Munich, she begs him to return it quickly as she is “dying with curiosity” to know what he thinks of it. Casement's letters to her are not included in the volume, but on February 16th she expresses regret that he has declined to help her, at the same time admitting that their outlook is so entirely different that it would perhaps be better if she kept her impressions to herself until quite near the end of the war …  p.62 and at the end of a long letter she adds, “I am very disappointed you will not help me.”

People behaved oddly to him. Meyer, for example, chose this opportunity to post him a typewritten copy of Robert Emmet's speech from the dock … “I am charged with being an emissary of France … With negotiating with the French Government to obtain from them an aid sufficient to accomplish the separation of Ireland from Great Britain … We sought aid … as auxiliaries in war and allies in peace.” As Casement's eyes glanced over the familiar sentences, he wondered why Meyer had done this, what was the point of a German sending him an Irishman's speech. Could there be some barbed meaning to this missive or was it the German idea of a joke?

On February 16th he returned to Berlin to see his friend, Mr. Gaffney, ex-American Consul in Munich, who had lately arrived in Germany. Mr. Gaffney discussed the possibility of Casement going to America with a certain Mr. Schirmer who was constantly travelling to and fro on missions for the German Foreign Office. This would have been a happy issue from afflictions but Mr. Schirmer deprecated the plan and advised postponement in spite of the fact that a great Irish Convention was due to take place in New York on the 4th of March. Casement therefore accompanied Mr. and Mrs.  p.63 Gaffney to Munich. They liked him and were genuinely kind to him. Monteith soon followed them to Munich to inform them that somewhere about the first of March a telegram signed by Devoy had reached the German Foreign Office from America asking for “rifles, etc.” to be sent to Ireland as “something of great importance” would happen shortly. Monteith had been told of this demand by a German officer Lieutenant Frey, and had been given to understand that the German General Staff would be willing to supply 200,000 rifles for shipment in trawlers to some point or points on the Coast of Ireland. He had hastened to Munich to consult Sir Roger in the matter but he found Sir Roger knew nothing whatever about Irish-American activities.

That the German General staff was interesting itself in the proposal was by this time enough to make Casement suspicious and distrustful. Showing considerable perturbation, he said to Monteith, “I don't trust these people or anything they promise. They lie always … If they promise to give us 200,000 rifles, etc., it is not to help us, rest assured of that. They have shown me repeatedly that they cannot keep faith and have no feeling for Ireland at all … However if they offer us this large armament, we should be fools not to take it if we could get it.” Monteith went on to say that Devoy had promised to write full particulars about the “something that was to happen,” and that the letter was due  p.64 to arrive between March 13th and 18th. He begged Casement to endeavour to be present in Berlin in good time to learn its contents. Sir Roger agreed to this and forthwith drew up a memorandum for the General Staff pointing out how essential it was that he should be allowed to travel to Ireland before any rifles were shipped as arrangements would have to be made for landing them. When he reached Berlin, he again insisted that he ought to be dispatched ahead of the arms in a submarine. He wished two companions of his choice to accompany him ¹⁷

Captain Nadoling of the Political Department of the General Staff alleged that since the coast of Ireland was closely watched, a submarine landing men would be seen and captured. Sir Roger replied that if a submarine could not make a secret call without risk of capture, how could they hope to land arms from any kind of trawler or steamer? Captain Nadoling went on to say that the Admiralty would not lend a submarine save as an escort to arms. No doubt he had in his mind the possibility of torpedoing any British gun boat or cruisers that attempted to capture the arms. He assured Casement that in any case the information as to the gun-running would be given to Devoy in plenty of time to admit of his passing it on to Ireland. Captain Nadoling rather naturally assumed that all the men of the Irish  p.65 Brigade would accompany Sir Roger on this expedition and suggested that they should be disguised as seamen in clothes taken off English prisoners, but Sir Roger emphatically said he could not trust them all and that the final selection of men must be left to him and “Lieutenant” Monteith. Captain Nadoling then remarked with what must have been mock seriousness that with this help Casement would surely be in a position to “dictate” terms to the British Government and secure “autonomy” at least for Ireland.

Further protests seemed useless to Casement, for he did not dare risk depriving Devoy and the Irish in America and “my” Volunteers of the only help that would ever come their way. The onus of refusal of the help proffered, inadequate as he knew it to be, would be thrown on him, not only by the Germans but by the Irish in America. As he knew nothing about the plans in which he willy-nilly had to co-operate, he asked to see any documents received from Devoy. The typed copy of a letter dated February 16th, 1916, signed by Devoy, was then shown to him. In it the estimated number of British troops in Ireland was placed at 40,000 “inferior men with but little artillery,” and the volunteers at 10,000 “with rifles and 200 rounds per man.” Many thousands more men, it was said, would be available if arms could be supplied. Devoy requested that artillery should be accompanied by  p.66 German officers and German gunners and that 100,000 rifles should also be sent. With such supplies “there would be no doubt of Irish ability to defeat British forces.” Limerick was suggested as the best landing-place. There was reason for dispatch as Easter Sunday was “the day.” Devoy further put forward the plea that Casement should not accompany the arms but should remain on in Germany as the accredited representative of the Irish revolutionary body. Casement was rather cast down and said nothing much except that he must insist on accompanying the men. Captain Nadoling readily agreed that Casement could not remain behind. “You must be there with them, everything forces you to go,” he said, and then as a sort of concession he went over to the War Department to get permission for certain men at Zossen, picked by Monteith, to learn immediately the art of using machine guns.

The wretched Casement by this time must have felt he was being utterly fooled, not only by Germans but by Irish-Americans. As he walked away from the office of the General Staff through the Tiergarten, he looked with disgust on “the hideous and appalling Hohenzollerns of the Sieges Allee.” Monteith, who accompanied, agreed that though any rising in Ireland unsupported by a German Army Corps must prove useless, yet they had no right to block any  p.67 proffers of help. On reflection Casement felt that he and the whole Irish entanglement were being got rid of on the cheapest possible terms and that the German gesture of assistance, for it was no more, was made to the Clan-na-Gael and not to Ireland. Viewed in retrospect it is clear that the realists of the German General Staff had their vision fixed on America rather than Ireland, on a great power rather than a nation which was not a power at all great or small. It must have seemed probable to them that a consignment of men and arms would serve to keep Irish-America linked up with German-America and impede the action of President Wilson and the pro-Britons in the United States. Casement could see nothing in the plan save an effort to trick America, and if it failed as an expedition, as fail it must, the blame of course would be laid on Ireland.

Later he went to the Admiralty to try and get hold of a submarine in which to travel ahead of the arms. This demand was opposed by Captain Heydell with the argument used by Captain Nadoling that the coast of Ireland was being closely watched and that the submarine would be caught. He told Casement that the arms would be dispatched in a 1,000 ton steamer disguised as a timber ship flying Norwegian colours. This boat was due to be at Tralee Bay between the 20th and 23rd of April and the Irish were to provide a pilot to bring her into Fenit Pier. It was always possible, Captain Heydell added, that a British cruiser might round her up, put a prize crew aboard and take the ship into a British post. Then with an exquisite sense of humour, he  p.68 said: “In that event your only chance would be to throw the prize crew overboard and go on with the ship.” To think of this sick, lanky civilian and his half-hearted followers tackling with their hands a prize crew of British sailors amused the German Naval officer vastly.

The German plans, it appeared, had all been made known to Devoy, whose cable with the words “all right” under the date of March 14th was produced. Casement found it hard to reconcile this cable with the statement made to him by Captain Nadoling on March 16th that they were waiting for his arrival before calling to America. Obviously they had done nothing of the kind and were planning the expedition without consulting him at all, and equally obviously were anxious to get rid of the whole matter of the Irish Brigade which had long revealed itself to them as a stupid entanglement, of which they failed to see the comic element.

Casement began to brood over the typed copy of Robert Emmett's dying speech which had reached him at the Neu-Wittelsbach Sanatorium on Leap Year's day. Though at the time he could not explain it, he now realized its tragic implication. Professor Meyer, it was clear, must have known everything, known as early as the 29th of February that the German Foreign Office and General Staff were agreed that Devoy's telegram gave them a wonderful chance of jettisoning  p.69 him and his Brigade while apparently conforming to Irish-American wishes. The Emmet speech must then be accepted as a death sentence. The intention of the German General Staff obviously was to ensure bloodshed in Ireland so as to divert British troops to that minor theatre of war. Realisation of his own impotence drove Casement half-demented. He who had dreamt of emancipating his country was now to be used as the instrument of her destruction.

By March 28th thirty-eight men were receiving machine-gun instruction at Zossen, but Casement was informed by Monteith that from twelve to twenty men only could be regarded as reliable for the Irish expedition. On March 29th he again tackled the Admiralty and then went to see Captain Nadoling and his aides of the General staff. At the end of a two hour interview, during which Nadoling impatiently came and went, the Captain finally said, “well, Sir Roger Casement, you must promise to do nothing, to move no hand or finger in this matter and to communicate with no one. We shall decide what course we shall take.” Sir Roger replied, “I can tell no one. You take good care of that. You have me virtually a prisoner.”

The following day he saw Nadoling again, and was obliged to listen to this oration:  p.70 “The plan of aiding your countrymen in Ireland was proposed to us by your friends in America. We had and have no responsibility in it beyond trying to the best of our ability to comply with their request. It is not our plan. Your countrymen in Ireland are determined, your friends assert, to rise on a given day. Your friends in the United States appeal to us for help. We knew nothing of it before Mr. Devoy's telegram came, and all our subsequent action has been based on that. You know our proposals and we have sent them to Mr. Devoy. He agrees. You oppose the project or you are hindering it. The soldiers are an essential part of its success. The naval men say so. The machine guns must be ready to come into action as soon as the steamer arrives. We have no other men to send. If they don't go the whole thing may collapse. I shall cable to Mr. Devoy and say that owing to your action, we are compelled to withdraw from the matter at the eleventh hour and leave your countrymen in the lurch in Ireland. All the responsibility falls on your shoulders. We have no idealistic interest in Ireland. No revolution, no rifles. If it were not that we hope for a military diversion there, we should not give the rifles.”

[Handwritten in margin: The voice to which the unfortunate Sir Roger Casement listened was without any doubt that of the said General Staff speaking through the mouth of Captain Nadoling which undoubtedly had an identifiable interest in Ireland. It would indeed be difficult to find a nationalist cause anywhere in which it had an idealistic interest whether in the past or today, except as a potential “military diversion”. The tragedy of Casement is consonant with folly, the crass stupidity of a man who knew so little of modern armies as to imagine that for the service of his ideals he could use that remarkably efficient instrument of modern war, the said General Staff of the German Army. He became one of the countless millions of unknown men whose lives have been taken by that instrument in the pursuit of interests purely German. It was curious, though not excusable, for an educated man in the XXth century to make that particular mistake.]

Writhing in his powerlessness Sir Roger replied that he could not guarantee a revolution and that he sincerely hoped there would be no revolution. In fact he showed quite plainly that he disapproved of the alleged Irish-American plan of which, till information was communicated to him by the German Government, he obviously knew nothing at all. Angry and miserable as he was, his first instinct was to try and save the men he had beguiled from Limburg. This effort was extremely puzzling to the Germans for it never occurred to them nor would it occur to any other continental staff officer that soldiers who had volunteered for a certain object and were receiving training  p.71 as machine-gunners would not want to go and carry out their undertaking when the time and opportunity came. What was the good of segregating such men? They might just as well have been left with the other prisoners!

When Casement protested that his volunteers should not be sent to Ireland, they thought it was some obsession of his own, and Captain Count von Haugwitz of the General Staff was sent to Zossen to find out whether Monteith would take the men to Ireland without Casement's consent. Monteith proved unwilling, probably because he knew that very few, if indeed any, of the men could be trusted to fight the English. This is borne out by the fact that their one “trustworthy” man, Beverly alias Bailey, made a confession to a police sergeant on landing in Ireland to the effect that he had joined the “Brigade” in the hope of getting out of Germany.

There is no question that Casement throughout was hostile to Devoy's plan. He felt like a trapped rat. If only he could get to Ireland somehow and stop “the whole dreadful thing” before “this damned ship and her guns arrive!…” His rage spent itself in invective: “My God, what curs and cowards! And these are the men I thought might help Ireland. English rule in Ireland has indeed been a curse, but the Englishman is a truthful man and a gentleman and his word is sure.”  p.72 Once more he faced Nadoling and said nothing would induce him to take the men. The German Staff officer replied bluntly that he did not recognize Casement's right to interfere and “in any case,” he added, “the Agreement of December 23rd — 28th, 1914 is null and void as the Irish Brigade has not materialised.”
“If the Agreement is null and void,” Casement retorted, “what is the status of the men at Zossen?”
“Deserters!” shouted Nadoling.
“Who made them desert?” asked Casement. “Did the Imperial Government actually descend to tempt men to desert?”

There was more wrangling, and then Nadoling, speaking more temperately, continued: “Let us look at it this way. These men are Irish patriots, they wish to fight for their country. We offer them that chance.” He went on to explain that as Sir Roger was a civilian he might find it hard to understand the vital necessity of getting the machine guns into action immediately on landing. And in this matter Nadoling thought as every soldier would think, no matter his nationality; machine guns without machine gunners were an absurdity, but even two or three weeks training for men who after all were professional soldiers was better than no training at all. As a matter of fact, ten machine guns, a million rounds of ammunition, and fifty stout-hearted men  p.73 might make the landing of rifles a possibility even in the teeth of local opposition and here was a civilian who had gone to the length of recruiting men for special service refusing to allow the men to be used at all. He wsas negligible as they were contemptible. In fact Captain Nadoling was not only German but typically German general staff.

By the 4th of April it had somehow been arranged that only Beverly and Monteith were to go with Casement to Ireland, but their hopes must have been low, for Haugwitz was asked to provide poison for all three. On the 5th of April Sir Roger went to Zossen to say good-bye to the men, taking with him Father Crotty to confess them, an unnecessary proceeding as they had been looked after by a Father Dahmen, S.J., from Berlin.

At this time Casement took an exaggerated view of the “criminality” of the German government. After all it had done precisely what it was asked to do, namely, provide facilities for the formation of an Irish Brigade. Since the failure of the scheme the Government had paid scant attention to Casement and when a demand for arms came from the Clan-na-Gael, it complied with that demand in its own interests. No statesman or soldier can be expected to act against the interest of his country and never had any promise been made by any responsible German official to land German troops in support of a rising in Ireland. The object in  p.74 sending arms must have been to a great extent political. It was probably the hope of keeping the Irish-Americans happy and in league with the German Americans. The German Staff knew that militarily Ireland without command of the sea was a blind alley: it had proved so in the past. The fate of the Kinsale and Cork garrisons fleeing before Marlborough or the failure of Humbert's men at Ballinamuck testified historically to this fact. From no point of view was it in German interests to waste men in Ireland if the Irish were obliging enough to rebel themselves and so temporarily divert one or two British divisions from their ultimate destination in Flanders.

Casement who never grasped the professional military point of view and was not in touch with the Executive which planned the Easter rising, thought that Germany was trying to “initiate” the rising by the “paltry gift of a few secondhand rifles,” and this made him angry and miserable. He did not know that the rising was to take place independently of any German or other co-operation because the mystic and idealist who “initiated” it felt it was incumbent on his generation to make a blood sacrifice.

Casement could not admit to himself that his failure in Brigade making had made him ridiculous in the eyes of men who were dealing with the hard, horrible facts of wholesale war. Men to whom “Brigades” were not sentimental abstractions but small military formations to be expended as might be necessary to further the plans of the Higher Command. Thinking about Ireland and nothing but Ireland, he made no allowances whatever for a War Office Staff which was  p.75 probably driven to death with anxiety about what was actually happening at Verdun to masses of good Germans rather than what might happen in Kerry to a handful of Irish deserters! He was not interested in the war as a whole, though from time to time he congratulated Germans, such as the landlord of the Golden Lion at Zossen, on the success of some Zeppelin raid over England, having neither the natural ability nor the training to distinguish the incidental from the important.

He worried a good deal as to the use the British Propaganda Department would make of German help for Ireland. He is sure that it will be indicated to his fellow countrymen that German friendship is no less an evil than German enmity. The mad dog bites any hand. He does not see himself so much a traitor as a dupe fit for an asylum. “I feel like a man already damned,” he wrote “… The sooner my life is taken away from me the better.” Trapped, isolated, out of everything, with Irish-Americans acting without reference to him and Sinn Fein apparently not taking him into account — he was victim of a most bitter fate. After all his experience is not unique among political plotters  p.75a and he is far from being the only one who has winced at being wounded in the house of his friends! The fact that the experience is not unusual does not make it easier to bear for the victim.

A few days before quitting Germany Casement wrote the following words:
“This Prussian system is a curse. The whole thing is a brazen serpent lifted up in a wilderness of worshippers worshipping from fear at bottom. It represses all the higher sentiments of humanity — they dare not exist beside it. It is the embodiment of soulless efficiency dominating a great people.”

These words express the bitterness of Casement's disillusionment. In reading them I was put in mind of Wolfe Tone's experiences in Paris in 1796 when he was soliciting with the help of the Directory in aid of Ireland. He too “suffered dreadfully” and realised as clearly as Casement came to do that no one of the officials with whom his mission brought him in contact cared two pins whether he was hanged or not for his pains.

In the midst of reflections and regrets he was summoned to the Auswärtiges Amt. A telegram had come for him, the outcome obviously of the telegram sent by order of the German General Staff to Devoy. It was signed by J.P., a formula agreed upon with Joseph Plunkett before Casement left Ireland in 1914. Its contents in no wise reassured the recipient. Transmitted by the German minister at Berne, the gist of it is contained in the following sentences:

1. The rising is fixed for the evening of next Easter Sunday.

2. The large consignment of arms must be brought into Tralee Bay not later than the dawn of Easter Monday.

3. German officers will be necessary for the Volunteer Force. This is imperative.

4. German submarine will be required in Dublin Harbour.

With a copy of this telegram in his hand he went on to the German Admiralty, and taking a high and angry line he informed Captain Heydell that if no submarine and no officers were sent it would be treachery to Ireland, adding that if the General Staff was going to rule Germany, it would send the country straight to hell. The naval officers probably thought him mad. Receiving no encouragement from them, in despair he sent for Haugwitz to come and talk to him in his hotel. This gentleman pacified him by saying that on military grounds it was impossible to send German officers without German men, as the organisation and discipline of the Volunteers was different from that of the German army. German officers would not know how to handle Irish volunteers. From nothing Count Haugwitz said was any comfort to be derived.

Casement next consulted Noeggerath, a confidential agent of the Foreign Office. He said he was absolutely convinced that the British would seize the ship, and that he was praying for it as possibly the best way to avoid the greater evil,  p.77 for if the ship were seized and the British Government published the fact that it had captured a ship with rifles and Sir Roger Casement on board, the rising would be stopped. To Monteith, he said that he would be glad to go even to death on the scaffold of an English gaol in order to be away from Germany and the people he despised so much.

On April the 7th he was summoned to the office of the General Staff to discuss the Berne message, and in reply to it drafted the following telegram:
When did you leave Berlin and what was your last advice from Germany?
Steamer with 20,000 rifles, 5,000,000 cartridges, 10 machine guns, 1,000,000 cartridges will be off Inishtookert rock N.W. Hags on Easter Sunday Night.
No German officers or men going impossible dispatch.
No submarine can be sent.
Can you reach Dublin before Easter Sunday? A letter with fuller information follows.

Then he drafted the letter containing the fuller information: it was returned to him the same evening as “too late to be dispatched.”

Soon after he got back to his hotel he was summoned to the Admiralty, and after a long wait was told at 6.30 p.m. that after all he could have his submarine and be landed ahead of the rifles. This puzzling eleventh hour change  p.78 of plan was due, it seems, to the intervention of the Foreign office at Noeggerath's instance, but Casement naturally enough regarded it as a victory and when he saw Monteith at the Saxonia Hotel that evening he spoke of his “success.” Monteith, who was accompanied by Beverly alias Bailey, appeared to be very pleased at the news. He told Sir Roger that he had brought with him from the bank at Zossen over 3,800 marks, the balance of the Brigade fund. This must have been money sent either from America or Ireland, as Casement is particular to say that he touched no penny of German money either for himself or for the Irish cause, and he was extremely frugal in his personal life.

To calm the agitation of mind caused by his disputes with military and naval officers, he begged for a talk with Countess Blücher. She describes him as “one demented.” Talking in a husky whisper, he told her he had been everywhere shadowed as a spy in the pay of England. “Now,” he said, “the German Admiralty have asked me to go on an errand which all my being revolts against and I am going mad at the thought of it, for it will make me appear a traitor to the Irish cause.” After this he sat down and “sobbed with terror and grief.” She asked questions which he refused to answer for fear of compromising others, all he would say was: “They are holding a pistol to my head here if I refuse, and they have a hangman's rope ready for me in England.” Before he left, he gave her “letters” to be handed to some unnamed person. In his last diary Casement mentions going to see a lady “he could trust” and gives details of the conversation that ensued. As the dates differ and the accounts of what passed do not correspond, it could not have been Countess Blücher to whom he refers, but one would like to know the name of the woman he had recourse to in his extremity, for it must have been risky to befriend even a reputed spy.

On the 8th of April he found the German Irish “treaty” had been published in all the papers. Casement who could not at all understand the official motive for this advertisement wrote in his diary, “Surely there is a fate which hurls things on.” That night he was informed that U Boat 19 would be ready for him on April the 12th at Emden. The “Aud” with 20,000 Russian (1905) rifles and ten machine guns taken in Flanders would also sail. ¹⁸

His fate was sealed, there was nothing to be done now, except write farewell letters and buy a few necessary articles for the voyage. In a way it was a relief to have things settled. When life comes to mean little, death also means little. The responsibility was at any rate off his shoulders. All the steps that had led him to this pass had been taken  p.80 with a want of judgment natural to those who act on impulse. He did not know his own character, he never realised that a man of his temperament, though capable of attracting devoted friends, was incapable of influencing soldiers of the British Regular Army. He was neither fighting man, nor leader and when the initial repulse to his appeal came from the prisoners themselves, he crumbled despairingly in soul. There was no foundation for his castle of dreams — that airy superstructure had vanished at its first contact with concrete reality, in the shape of German staff officers.

He embarked in a submarine at Emden which came to grief off Heligoland. There after wasting two precious days he was re-embarked in an inferior, smaller submarine the skipper of which lost his way and landed him near Tralee instead of the agreed destination. He waded ashore from a collapsible boat in the dawn of a Good Friday morning feeling “radiantly happy” though he knew that landing meant death for him. Stiff after cooped-up days and sleepless nights, he knelt and kissed the earth of the country for which he had made so many mistakes and sacrifices costly not only to himself.

The end of the story is reached when events joined together the first and last links of a melancholy chain of victimizers and victims. The Irish-Americans had exploited Casement; Casement had exploited the Irish prisoners of war; the defaulters who constituted the Irish Brigade had  p.81 let down the Germans, and the Germans in their turn had let down the Irish-Americans and everything else Irish. Leaning his full weight on the traditional shibboleth that England's enemy must be Ireland's friend only to find it a myth, Casement fell from depth to depth of disillusion. It is a tale without honour save for the steady fidelity of the Irish prisoners of war at Limburg who remained true to their duty and their oath.

@book{E930001-001,
  title 	 = {Casement in Germany},
  author 	 = {Una Pope-Hennessy},
  edition 	 = {0},
  publisher 	 = {CELT (electronic edition)},
  address 	 = {Cork},
  date 	 = {2026}
}
 E930001-001.bib