Chapter XXXVI: Appendix: VI

SIR ROGER CASEMENT’S LETTERS TO MR. BLUNT

I

50 EBURY STREET, S.W., _12 May_ 1914.

DEAR MR. BLUNT,

My name may be known to you—either as a friend of Mrs. Dryhurst and the late “Egypt”—or perhaps in connection with Congo and later Amazon rubber crimes. Now I am only out to end the Irish crime—and I write you on that account.

Your letter to the Women’s meeting in Dublin was very welcome to us all—particularly the reference to the “Stick behind.” I came over from Dublin with Professor Mac Neill of the N. University on a Volunteer mission (we are both among its chief organizers). He had to go back to Dublin on Saturday night much regretting he could not see you. I thought you were still in Chapel Street where Mrs. Dryhurst told me you used to be—only to-day I got your address in the country. Professor Mac Neill said the last time he saw you was in convict’s clothes at the Four Courts (I think) where he used to work. He would very much have liked to see you—so too should I. Your “Land War in Ireland” I have often rejoiced over.

If you would care to see a wild Irishman (something of the type possibly of your old Irish Bishop who wanted the dynamite!) I would come down for an hour. There are things I would like to say to you, and hear from you before I go back to Ireland very soon. If, then, you feel disposed to have a wholly Irish talk for an hour or two with one somewhat in need of advice I should be very glad to come and see you. I go back probably Saturday to Ireland.

Yours very truly,

ROGER CASEMENT.

II

50 EBURY STREET, S.W., _14 May_ 1914.

DEAR MR. BLUNT,

I want to thank you very warmly for the delightful day and kind welcome you gave me. The copy of your book I shall treasure. Were it for nothing else but that noble preface I should treasure it.

Please God we _shall_ have the Harp without the Crown some day. I may have some writings of my own—on Ireland—out before long and if so I shall so gladly send you a copy. They do not omit the “Empire” and the other “lost causes,” India, Egypt, &c.—I feel always they are links with ours and we must help them. Meantime I send you a “leaflet” on the Irish language—for I see in your book that you realized how the language, too, had been marked out for destruction. So very few Englishmen, even friends of Ireland politically, ever knew or dreamed there was such a thing as an Irish language! This leaflet I wrote some years ago (1905) for propagandist purposes in the North of Ireland—and it went broadcast over National Ulster and is still going. When the momentary collusion of English Whig and Tory has passed away, and a resurgent and free Ireland emerges, with a Volunteer Army to guard and keep its liberty, rest assured that army of a recovered Ireland will _not_ be used “as a new weapon of offence in English hands against the freedom of the world elsewhere.” Wherever I go to-day in Ireland (and I go widely) I say that we stand in the forefront of human freedom—fighting a battle that is world-wide—and that altho’ we fight it to-day with unarmed hands we shall see the day when we’ll fight it with armed manhood.

I came over to London only about the Irish Volunteers, and now I return to Ireland, glad to have seen you and talked with you. When I get back to Malahide I will send you a letter I recently wrote to the Irish press on that very point—in which I cite Egypt and India. Meantime I hope the _flamboyant_ appeal in this leaflet for the old tongue of Ireland will not shock you. It was written for popular gatherings—in a style they like—and it is always something to get them, in Ireland, to read at all.

Yours sincerely,

ROGER CASEMENT.

III

City of Dublin Steam Packet Co.’s

_R.M.S. Ulster_,

_May 16_, 1914.

DEAR MR. BLUNT,

The inclosed article from to-day’s “New Statesman” may interest you. I have not any idea of the identity of the writer—but he, or she, is fairly right in the line of criticism. Whoever it is has read the Dublin papers because they only, I think, had your letter; and they only, I know, had the quotation I have marked with double lines which is from a speech of mine at Tullamore on the 19th April, to a great Volunteer gathering. I am now returning to Ireland and shall go to Ulster very soon, and try to get the Ulster Nationalists—Protestant and Catholic—pledged to fight against Exclusion and any “clean cut.”

I am taking over an air gun—to shoot pellets—in the sure and certain hope it will be seized by the Customs at Kingston on arrival. The people who cannot prevent 20,000 (or 50,000) rifles with 3,500,000 cartridges from being imported by special vessel into Ulster are powerful elsewhere! The grave and unprecedented outrage in Ulster goes unchecked, unchallenged, and unpunished—and I’d wager 5 to 1 my boy’s air gun, this evening, will be triumphantly confiscated and the packet of pellets too.

I am more and more convinced that Asquith and Co. mean to betray Home Rule after they have got their Parliamentary Act put to the test, by successfully passing a bare and empty formula. The “Amending Bill” will kill Home Rule. If we had 10,000 rifles in the rest of Ireland we’d kill the British Empire. The young men in the Volunteers are out for one thing only—to revive the Fenian spirit, and please God will do it.

I had often thought of you and wanted to meet you—years ago when I read of your championing the cause of Egypt—and wondered how any Englishman could be brave enough and unselfish enough to attack the British Holy of Holies—their right to exploit weaker peoples.

Now that I have met you I am glad—and if I never see you again I shall carry with me always the memory. I wish you were young and able to come and help us in Ireland as you did in the Land War, now thirty years ago. We have so few to lead in the brave direction—and there are none of those old Bishops left. We must get some rifles in for the Volunteers. If only we could arm Irishmen again the question of Irish freedom would be settled then and there, I believe—for the British Empire can grow fat and rich but it dare not fight. A free Ireland will mean a free India—and a free Egypt in the end. I send you a most treasonable pamphlet called the “Elsewhere Empire.” Read it if you are not shocked, for it is not polite literature but a crude appeal to nationality versus Imperialism. It is an instance, a poor one perhaps, of the new Ireland—an Ireland reverting to ’48 and ’98—when Irishmen preached not freedom for themselves alone but freedom for all others.

Forgive a hurried line on the boat going over and believe in the very sincere regard and esteem of an Irishman who puts national life and realization wherever it may struggle in the forefront of human causes.

Yours sincerely,

ROGER CASEMENT.

I cannot find the pamphlet on board, I’ll get it at Malahide and send it to you. R.C.

IV

MALAHIDE, CO. DUBLIN, IRELAND,

_22 May_ 1914.

DEAR MR. BLUNT,

I came across the review of your “Land War” from a small Irish paper (“Sinn Fein”) to-day in looking thro’ Home papers and thought it might interest you. The writer is the Editor—Mr. Arthur Griffiths.

The Irish Volunteers are swelling daily! The whole countryside is pouring in—and if we had rifles we could get 100,000 men inside a month—and in six months they’d be one of the best forces in Europe—for the young men take to drill like a duck to water.

Yours sincerely,

ROGER CASEMENT.