.
Return to Ireland In Ireland in 1904, on leave from Africa from that year until 1905, Casement joined the
Gaelic League, an organisation established in 1893 to preserve and revive the spoken and literary use of the
Irish language. He met the leaders of the powerful
Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) to lobby for his work in the Congo. He did not support those, like the IPP, who proposed
Home Rule, as he believed that the
House of Lords would veto such efforts. Casement was more impressed by
Arthur Griffith's new
Sinn Féin party (founded 1905), which called for an independent Ireland (through a non-violent series of strikes and boycotts). Its sole imperial tie would be a
dual monarchy between Britain and Ireland, modelled on the policy example of
Ferenc Deák in Hungary. Casement joined the party in 1905. In a letter to Mrs. J. R. Green, (the Irish historian
Alice Stopford Green) dated 20 April 1906 Casement reflected on his conversion to the national cause as someone who had "accepted imperialism" and had been close to an "ideal" Englishman: It is a mistake for an Irishman to mix himself up with the English. He is bound to do one of two things—either to go to the wall if he remains Irish or to become an Englishman himself. You see I very nearly did become one once. At the Boer War time, I had been away from Ireland for years, out of touch with everything native to my heart and mind, trying hard to do my duty, and every fresh act of duty made me appreciably nearer the ideal of the Englishman. I had accepted Imperialism. British rule was to be accepted at all costs, because it was the best for everyone under the sun, and those who opposed that extension ought rightly to be 'smashed.' I was on the high road to being a regular Imperialist jingo—although at heart underneath all, and unsuspected almost by myself, I had remained an Irishman. Well, the war, [i.e.,
the Boer War] gave me qualms at the end—the
concentration camps bigger ones—and finally, when up in those lonely Congo forests where I found
Leopold I found also myself, the incorrigible Irishman
. Ulster In the north, through his sister, Nina, in
Portrush, and his close friends in London,
Robert Lynd and
Sylvia Dryhurst, Casement was drawn into the orbit of
Francis Joseph Bigger. A wealthy Presbyterian solicitor, at his house on the northern shore of Belfast Lough, , Bigger hosted not only the poets and writers of the "Northern Revival"
, but also, and critically for Casement,
Ulster Protestants committed to taking the case for an Irish Ireland to their co-religionists. These included Ada McNeil, with whom Casement helped organise the first ('Festival of the Glens') at
Waterfoot (
County Antrim) in 1904, On the Irish interplay between religious factions and independence, Casement wrote to Bulmer Hobson in 1909: "The Irish Catholic, man for man, is a poor crawling coward as a rule. Afraid of his miserable soul and fearing the priest like the Devil". Freedom could come to Ireland ".. only through Irish Protestants, because they are not afraid of any Bogey". Casement retired from the British consular service in the summer of 1913. In October he spoke at a Protestant assembly at
Ballymoney Town Hall organised by Captain
Jack White (who, in the midst of the
Dublin lock-out, with
James Connolly had begun organising a workers' militia, the
Irish Citizen Army). On a platform with Ada McNeill, the historian
Alice Stopford Green, and the veteran
tenant-right activist
J. B. Armour, he spoke to the motion disputing the claim of
Edward Carson and his unionists "to represent the Protestant community of North East Ulster", and condemning the prospect of "lawless resistance" to Home Rule. In the event, the Ballymoney Protestant "Protest Against the Lawles Policy of Carsonism" proved to be the only meeting of its kind held anywhere in Ulster. At the same time White and Connolly at the ITGWU formed the
Irish Citizen Army. In April 1914, he had been together with Alice Milligan in
Larne shortly after Craig had had
German guns run through the port, a feat Casement told her nationalists would have to match.
America and Germany In July 1914, Casement journeyed to the United States to promote and raise money for the Volunteers among the large and numerous Irish communities there. Through his friendship with men such as
Bulmer Hobson, a member both of the Volunteers and of the secret
Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), Casement established connections with exiled Irish nationalists, particularly . Elements of the suspicious
Clan did not trust Casement completely, as he was not a member of the IRB and held views that they considered too moderate but others, such as
John Quinn, regarded him as extreme. Devoy, initially hostile to Casement for his part in conceding control of the Irish Volunteers to
John Redmond, was won over in June, and
Joseph McGarrity, another leader, became devoted to Casement and remained so from then on. The
Howth gun-running in late July 1914, which Casement had helped to organise and (with a loan from Alice Stopford Green) finance, further enhanced his reputation. In August 1914, at the outbreak of World War I, Casement and John Devoy arranged a meeting in New York with the western hemisphere's top-ranking German diplomat,
Count Bernstorff, to propose a mutually beneficial plan: if Germany would sell guns to the Irish revolutionaries and provide military leaders, the Irish would revolt against England, diverting troops and attention from the war with Germany. Bernstorff appeared sympathetic. Casement and Devoy sent an envoy, president
John Kenny, to present their plan personally. Kenny, while unable to meet the
German Emperor, did receive a warm reception from the German ambassador to Italy
Hans von Flotow, and from
Prince von Bülow. In October 1914, Casement sailed from New York for Germany via Norway, travelling in disguise with a false passport and seeing himself as an ambassador of the Irish people. While the journey was his idea, financed the expedition. Casement was carrying a large sum of money and sensitive documents. As a precaution he was accompanied by Adler Christensen, a young Norwegian immigrant returning to visit his family. The ship was boarded by the Royal Navy, detained and searched during which time Christensen concealed the money and documents entrusted to him. Casement was undetected. During their brief stop in
Christiania, Adler Christensen, was taken to the British legation, where he was questioned about his travelling companion. He gave no information. Later he made a second visit this time on Casement's instructions and was informed that he would be rewarded if Casement were "knocked on the head". British diplomat
Mansfeldt Findlay, sent a top secret memorandum to the Foreign Office alleging that Christensen had intimated a homosexual relationship with Casement. He continued to advise London that Christensen had, "implied that their relations were of an unnatural nature and that consequently he had great power over this man". On Casement's instructions, Christensen set about the entrapment of Findlay, which he finally achieved in December 1914 when Findlay handwrote the authorized bribe of £5,000 on official notepaper (equivalent to £606,100 in 2023), also guaranteeing immunity and free passage to the US in return for information leading to the capture of Roger Casement. Christensen returned to Berlin soon after with the original document which he delivered to a German official. . Papen was key in organising
the arms shipments. Findlay's handwritten letter of 1914 is kept in
University College Dublin, and is viewable online. In November 1914, Casement negotiated a declaration by Germany which stated:The Imperial Government formally declares that under no circumstances would Germany invade Ireland with a view to its conquest or the overthrow of any native institutions in that country. Should the fortune of this Great War, which was not of Germany's seeking, ever bring in its course German troops to the shores of Ireland, they would land there not as an army of invaders to pillage and destroy but as the forces of a Government that is inspired by goodwill towards a country and people for whom Germany desires only national prosperity and national freedom. Casement spent most of his time in Germany seeking to recruit an
Irish Brigade from among more than 2,000 Irish
prisoners-of-war taken in the early months of the war and held in the prison camp of
Limburg an der Lahn. American Ambassador to Germany
James W. Gerard mentioned the effort in his memoir "My Four Years in Germany": The Germans collected all the soldier prisoners of Irish nationality in one camp at Limburg not far from Frankfurt a[m]. M[ain]. There efforts were made to induce them to join the German army. The men were well treated and were often visited by Sir Roger Casement who, working with the German authorities, tried to get these Irishmen to desert their flag and join the Germans. A few weaklings were persuaded by Sir Roger who finally discontinued his visits, after obtaining about thirty recruits, because the remaining Irishmen chased him out of the camp. On 27 December 1914, Casement signed an agreement in Berlin with
Arthur Zimmermann in the German Foreign Office, renouncing all his titles in a letter to the British Foreign Secretary dated 1 February 1915. During World War I, Casement is known to have been involved in the German-backed plan by Indians to win their freedom from the
British Raj, the "
Hindu–German Conspiracy", recommending Joseph McGarrity to
Franz von Papen as an intermediary. The Indian nationalists may also have followed Casement's strategy of trying to recruit prisoners of war to fight for Indian independence. Both efforts proved unsuccessful. In addition to finding it difficult to ally with the Germans while held as prisoners, potential recruits to Casement's brigade knew they would be liable to the death penalty as traitors if Britain won the war. In April 1916, Germany offered the Irish 20,000
Mosin–Nagant 1891 rifles, ten
machine guns and accompanying ammunition, but no German officers; it was a fraction of the quantity of the arms Casement had hoped for, with no military expertise on offer. Estimates of the weapons shipment hover around the 20,000 mark. The BBC gives the figure the German government originally agreed to ship as "25,000 captured Russian rifles, and one million rounds of ammunition". The German weapons never reached Ireland. The British had intercepted German communications coming from Washington and suspected that there was going to be an attempt to land arms at Ireland, although they were not aware of the precise location. The ship transporting the arms—the German cargo vessel
Libau, disguised as a Norwegian vessel, , under Captain
Karl Spindler—was apprehended by
HMS Bluebell on the late afternoon of Good Friday. About to be escorted into Queenstown (present-day
Cobh),
County Cork, on the morning of 22 April, Captain Spindler scuttled the ship by pre-set explosive charges. All of the crew were German sailors, though their clothes and effects, plus charts and books, were Norwegian, and the surviving crew became prisoners of war. As
John Devoy had either misunderstood or disobeyed Pearse's instructions that the arms were under no circumstances to land before Easter Sunday, the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union (TGWU) members set to unload the arms under the command of
Irish Citizen Army officer and trade unionist
William Partridge were not ready. The IRB men sent to meet the boat drove off a pier and drowned.
Landing and capture Casement confided his personal papers to Dr Charles Curry, with whom he had stayed at
Riederau on the
Ammersee, before he left Germany. He departed with Robert Monteith and Sergeant Daniel Beverley (Bailey) of the Irish Brigade in a
submarine, initially , which developed engine trouble, and then , shortly after the
Aud sailed. According to Monteith, Casement believed the Germans were toying with him from the start and providing inadequate aid that would doom a rising to failure. Casement did not learn about the
Easter Rising until after the plan had been fully developed. He wanted to reach Ireland before the shipment of arms and convince
Eoin MacNeill (who he believed was still in control) to cancel the rising. Casement sent John McGoey, a recently arrived Irish-American, through Denmark to Dublin, ostensibly to advise what military aid was coming from Germany and when, but with Casement's orders "to get the Heads in Ireland to call off the rising and merely try to land the arms and distribute them". McGoey did not reach Dublin, nor did his message. His fate was unknown until recently. Evidently abandoning the Irish Nationalist cause, he joined the
Royal Navy in 1916, survived the war, and later returned to the United States, where he died in an accident on a building site in 1925. In the early hours of 21 April 1916, three days before the rising began, the German submarine put Casement and his two companions ashore at
Banna Strand in
Tralee Bay,
County Kerry – the boat used is now in the
Imperial War Museum in London. Suffering from a recurrence of the malaria that had plagued him since his days in the Congo, and too weak to keep up with Monteith and Bailey, Casement was discovered by a sergeant of the
Royal Irish Constabulary at McKenna's Fort, an ancient ring fort in
Rahoneen,
Ardfert now known as Casement's Fort. When three pistols were discovered hidden nearby, the RIC arrested Casement on a charge of illegally bringing weapons into the country. Casement was eventually to face charges of
high treason,
sabotage and
espionage against the Crown. He sent word to Dublin about the inadequate German assistance. The Kerry Brigade of the
Irish Volunteers might have tried to rescue him over the next three days, but its leadership in Dublin held that not a shot was to be fired in Ireland before the
Easter Rising was in train and therefore ordered the Brigade to "do nothing" – a subsequent internal inquiry attached "no blame whatsoever" to the local Volunteers for failing to attempt a rescue. "He was taken to
Brixton Prison to be placed under special observation for fear of an attempt of suicide. There were no staff at the
Tower [of London] to guard suicidal cases."
Trial and execution Casement's
trial at bar opened at the
Royal Courts of Justice on 26 June 1916 before the
Lord Chief Justice (
Viscount Reading),
Mr Justice Avory, and
Mr Justice Horridge. The prosecution had trouble arguing its case. Casement's crimes had been carried out in Germany and the
Treason Act 1351 seemed to apply only to activities carried out on English (or arguably British) soil. A close reading of the Act allowed for a broader interpretation: the court decided that a comma should be read into the unpunctuated original
Norman-French text, crucially altering the sense so that "in the realm or elsewhere" referred to where acts were done and not just to where the "King's enemies" might be. Afterwards, Casement himself wrote that he was to be "hanged on a comma", leading to the well-used
epigram. During his trial, the prosecution (
F. E. Smith), who had admired Casement's work while he was a British consul, informally suggested to the defence barrister (
A. M. Sullivan) that they should jointly offer the typescripts produced by the Metropolitan Police in evidence; these were said to be official copies of Casement's secret diaries. The prosecution assumed that Sullivan hoped to save Casement's life with a verdict of
"guilty but insane". However, Sullivan refused to agree and Casement was subsequently found guilty and sentenced to be hanged. Before, during and after the trial and appeal, British intelligence showed the police typescripts to the press and to influential persons. These portrayed Casement as a "sexual deviant" with numerous explicit accounts of homosexual activity. Scandalous rumours aroused public opinion against him and influenced those notables who might otherwise have tried to intervene. Given societal norms and the illegality of homosexuality at the time, support for Casement's reprieve declined in some quarters. The typescripts remained secret until published in 1959 as the
Black Diaries. Bound diaries said to be the originals are kept in the British
National Archives, whilst most of the other exhibits from the trial are in the
Crime Museum in London. Casement unsuccessfully appealed against his conviction and death sentence. Those who pleaded for clemency for Casement included
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who was acquainted with Casement through the work of the Congo Reform Association, poet
W. B. Yeats, and playwright
George Bernard Shaw.
Joseph Conrad could not forgive Casement, nor could Casement's longtime friend, the sculptor
Herbert Ward, whose son Charles had been killed on the Western Front that January, and who would change the name of Casement's godson, who had been named after him. Members of the Casement family in Antrim contributed discreetly to the defence fund, although they had sons in the British Army and Navy. A
United States Senate appeal against the death sentence was rejected by the British cabinet on the insistence of prosecutor F. E. Smith, an opponent of Irish independence. Casement's knighthood was forfeited on 29 June 1916. On the day of his execution by
hanging at
Pentonville Prison, 3 August 1916, Casement was received back into the Catholic Church at his request. He was attended by two Catholic priests, Dean Timothy Ring and Father James Carey, from the East London parish of
SS Mary and Michael. The latter, also known as James McCarroll, said of Casement that he was "a saint ... we should be praying to him [Casement] instead of for him". At the time of his death he was 51 years old.
State funeral Casement's body was buried in
quicklime in the prison cemetery at the rear of Pentonville Prison, where he had been hanged, though his last wish was to be buried at
Murlough Bay on the north coast of
County Antrim, in present-day
Northern Ireland. During the decades after his execution, successive British governments refused many formal requests for repatriation of Casement's remains. For example, in September 1953,
Taoiseach Éamon de Valera, on a visit to
Prime Minister Winston Churchill in Downing Street, requested the return of the remains. Churchill said he was not personally opposed to the idea but would consult with his colleagues and take legal advice. He ultimately turned down the Irish request, citing "specific and binding" legal obligations that the remains of executed prisoners could not be exhumed. De Valera disputed the legal advice and responded: . The capstone reads "Roger Casement, who died for the sake of Ireland, 3rd August 1916".De Valera received no reply. Contrary to Casement's wishes, Prime Minister
Harold Wilson's government had released the remains only on condition that they could
not be brought into Northern Ireland, as "the government feared that a reburial there could provoke Catholic celebrations and Protestant reactions." Casement's remains lay in state at the Church of the Sacred Heart (near
Arbour Hill Prison) in Dublin city for five days, close to the graves of other leaders of the 1916
Easter Rising, but would not be buried beside them. After a
state funeral, the remains were buried with full military honours in the
Republican plot in
Glasnevin Cemetery in
Dublin, alongside other Irish republicans and nationalists. The 82-year-old de Valera, who was then the
President of Ireland and the last surviving leader of the Easter Rising, attended the ceremony, along with an estimated 30,000 others. ==The
Black Diaries==