by some wealthy agency, for their circulation and advertisements could not have kept any of them in existence for a quarter of a year. Several of them were well printed on excellent paper, and all of them were circulating the same doctrines and competing in virulence against England. There can be no doubt that they were financed by Germany through German-American sources. 'Sinn Fein,' edited by Arthur Griffith, was to a great extent the official organ; Casement, writing anonymously, was one of its contributors. It was intensely pro-German. On Aug. 8, 1914, its leading article on the outbreak of the war said :

'Ireland is not at war with Germany. She has no quarrel with any Continental power. England is at war with Germany. . . . Germany is nothing to us in herself, but she is not an enemy. Our blood and our miseries are not on her head. But who can forbear admiration of the Germanic people whom England has ringed about with enemies, standing alone and undaunted against a world in arms?'

'Irish Freedom' was also a most active engine of German intrigue. It first appeared in November 1910, under the management of John McDermott, one of the signatories to the Proclamation of the Irish Republic in April 1916, a manifesto which of itself proves the prior Sinn Fein alliance with Germany, stating as it did that,

'having patiently perfected her discipline, having resolutely waited for the right moment to reveal itself, Ireland now seizes that moment; and, supported by her exiled children in America, and by gallant allies in Europe, but relying first on her own strength, she strikes in full confidence of victory.'

So far back as October and November 1911 'Irish Freedom' was working for Germany; and in one of a series of articles headed When Germany Fights England,' it wrote:

'If then Ireland lends her aid to Germany, and Germany wins in a war with England, Ireland will become an independent nation.'

Casement was one of the contributors to 'Irish Freedom'; and in December 1914 it contained an

announcement of his reception at the Foreign Office in Berlin :

'We have now an official statement by the German Government that Germany would never invade Ireland with a view to its conquest or the overthrow of any national institution. Should fortune ever bring the German troops to Ireland's shores, these troops would land not as an army of invaders to pillage and destroy, but as forces of a nation inspired by good-will towards Ireland and her people, for whom Germany desires national prosperity and freedom. In fact Germany has no quarrel with Ireland, and Ireland has no quarrel with Germany. The only enemy of Irish freedom is now, as ever, England.' *

Almost every number of the Sinn Fein publications, 'The Irish Volunteer,' 'Honesty,' 'The Spark,' 'The Irish Worker' (Larkin's paper, edited by Connolly, the rebel leader), 'The Gael,' 'Ireland,' 'Fianna Fail,' 'Scissors and Paste,' and 'Nationality' (the successor of 'Sinn Fein'), was openly or covertly pro-German. The loyal Irish, North and South, saw what was coming and warned the British Government; but these warnings, as well as those from official sources, were, as told in the evidence taken at the Hardinge Commission, disregarded. †

The domestic policy of Sinn Fein was, as we have seen, formulated in 1904. In 1911 its foreign policy was formulated. Griffith gave it a domestic policy; Casement gave it a foreign policy. In June 1911 he was knighted, and in the same year he was engaged in his traitorous dealings with Germany. He promulgated this policy by means of pamphlets privately circulated and by articles in the 'New Ireland Review' and writings in the seditious press. He was in touch with Germany and worked in collaboration with Kuno Meyer, who had long lived in Ireland, had founded the school of Irish Learning in Dublin in 1903, and held a professorship in University

* A proclamation printed in Berlin in almost identical terms with this statement was circulated and posted up in Co. Wexford and other places in Ireland in Feb. 1915; and large quantities of the proclamation were found at Enniscorthy in the house of Delacy, who escaped to America, and has been recently sentenced to two years' imprisonment for plotting the escape of Germans at San Francisco. See, further, note (2) on p. 268.

† 1916, Cd. 8311.

College, Liverpool. Casement's policy was to recommend Ireland to Germany as holding the key to unlock the Freedom of the Seas'; and to recommend Germany to Ireland by the vision of an Ireland created a sovereign state, guaranteed in independence by the victorious Central Powers at the Peace Congress that would assemble when England should be vanquished in the great war which he knew from his German associates was fast approaching.

The Sinn Fein foreign policy was published and disseminated and discussed in Ireland and known to Irish loyalists long before Ulster began to arm in resistance to Home Rule. The Sinn Fein Irish Volunteer Movement was not, as is so often asserted, designed as an answer to the Ulster Volunteer Movement; it was intended for a different purpose. Many of the rebels who organised it were in touch with Germany in Europe and America. The Irish Volunteers were raised by the Sinn Fein leaders as a military force to back the foreign policy of Sinn Fein, so that there should be a disciplined body of Irishmen ready to strike at England in the event of a German invasion, and, aided by German officers, men and munitions, to fight for the independence of Ireland. The Sinn Fein Volunteers were not hostile to the Ulster Volunteer Movement, and publicly proclaimed the fact; they rather welcomed it, counting on the hope that the Radical Government would force Home Rule on Ulster, that Ulster would resist in arms, that England would be plunged in civil war, that Germany would seize the opportunity, that a divided England, 'beaten to her knees,' would meet her Sadowa, and that Ireland, at last united, north and south, in detestation of British Government, would demand and compel her independence as Hungary had done.

Casement's review articles were collectively printed in America, and published in cheap pamphlet form (price five cents) before and immediately after the outbreak of the war, under the title of Ireland, Germany, and the Freedom of the Seas. A possible outcome of the war of 1914. To Free the Seas, free Ireland.'*

* They were also published in 1914 under the title The Crime against Europe-A possible Outcome of the War of 1914' (Philadelphia, the Celtic

In a preface dated Aug. 15, 1914, he said:

'It was the intention of the writer of the articles, begun in 1911, and written in odd moments in 1911 and between the end of 1912 and November 1913, to show how the vital needs of European peace, of European freedom of the seas, and of Irish national life and prosperity were indissolubly linked with Germany in the struggle so clearly impending between that country and Great Britain. The war has come sooner than was expected. The rest of the writer's task must be essayed not with the author's pen, but with the rifle of the Irish Volunteer. As a contribution to the cause of Irish freedom this presentment of the cause for Germany, friend of Ireland and foe of England, is now published.' . . . 'A German triumph will bring equality of opportunity to all who traverse the seas; and, in order to safeguard that new-won freedom, Ireland, the keeper of the seas for Great Britain, must become the keeper of the seas for Europe. Such is the object of the German effort; such the possibility and hope to Ireland and the sea nations of a German triumph. A German victory must bring, as one of the surest guarantees of future peace and sea-liberty for all, an Ireland restored to Europe and erected into a Sovereign European State under international guarantees.' . . . In this war Ireland has only one enemy. Let every Irish heart, let every Irish hand, let every Irish purse be with Germany. Let Irishmen in America get ready. The day a German sea victory tolls the deathknell of British tyranny at sea, it tolls the death-knell of British rule in Ireland.... Let Irishmen in America stand ready armed, keen, and alert. The German guns that sound the sinking of the British Dreadnoughts will be the fall of Ireland

to her scattered sons.'

The official policy of Sinn Fein calls upon the Irish to have nothing to do with Westminster, but to return members to form a Convention at home, and to represent Ireland at the Peace Conference after the war, and there demand that she shall be recognised as one of the small nationalities and her independence guaranteed by the Great Powers. Certain pressmen and members of parliament used to tell the British people that the Sinn Feiners were interesting idealists or harmless cranks. In reality

Press). Immense quantities of these pamphlets were circulated in Ireland through the post, being fraudulently enclosed in covers bearing the names of business firms in high repute in Dublin, Belfast, and elsewhere.

Sinn Fein is the most dangerous revolutionary movement since the time of the Tudors. As the Irish insurrectionaries had under Elizabeth a European foreign policy in connexion with England's great enemy, Spain, so now, after three hundred years, they have a foreign policy in connexion with her far greater enemy, Germany. Now, as then, the aim of that policy is to strike down the sea power of England and thus destroy her.

6

Casement's original articles supplied texts for the numerous seditious Irish newspapers, financed by German and Irish-American money. Two of the most remarkable of them-'Ireland and the Next War' (July 1913), and The Elsewhere Empire' (December 1913)-were published in the Irish Review,' the organ of the Irish 'Intellectuals,' and reproduced in 'Irish Freedom,' which was controlled by the most dangerous of the rebel leaders, MacDermott and James Connolly. They thus gained a wide publicity, not only among the long-haired men,' but among the rank and file of the seditious.

The following is a passage from one entitled 'The Keeper of the Seas,' circulated in August 1911:

'Without Ireland there would be to-day no British Empire. The vital importance of Ireland to England is understood but never proclaimed by every British statesman. To subdue that western and ocean-closing island and to exploit its resources, its people, and, above all, its position, to the sole advantage of the eastern island, has been the aim of every English Government from the days of Henry VIII onwards; and the vital importance of Ireland to Europe is not, and has not been, understood by any European statesman. To them it has not been a European island, a vital and necessary element of European development, but an appanage of England, an island beyond an island.'

...

'Montesquieu alone of French writers grasped the importance of Ireland in the international affairs of his time; and he blames the vacillation of Louis XIV, who failed to put forth his strength to establish James upon the throne of Ireland, and thus by an act of perpetual separation to "affaiblir le voisin." Napoleon, too late, in St Helena, realised his error: "Had I gone to Ireland instead of Egypt, the Empire of England was at an end." With these two utterances of the French writer and of the French ruler, we

* See Irish Freedom,' August 1913 and March 1914.