Where Casement would have stood today - Jack White

When Mr. Fowler was kind enough to invite me to give this address he
described it as the Casement Commemoration panegyric.

I accepted with pride, because I knew Roger Casement, not perhaps
intimately but with streaks of intimacy, when we travelled together
and stayed in the same hotels during the formation and inspection of
the first Irish volunteers or listened to Cathal O'Byrne's Antrim
ballads in the house of F J Bigger at Belfast.

Yet it is not my intention to deliver a panegyric. I believe that
no man alive or dead can be truth fully portrayed by a panegyric,
which I take to mean a pæan of undiluted praise, and I have the
strongest and deepest objection to the all too common Irish habit of
breaking a man's heart by misunderstanding while he is alive and
canonising him as soon as he is dead. I might almost say, because he
is dead.

I think it is a finer tribute to Casement to treat him as what he
was, a great and typically Irish human figure, an Irishman who took
the leading part which he did take in the birth of the new Ireland
because all through his life, he was being spiritually reborn as an
Irishman himself from the physical womb, so to speak, of his English
and Imperial connections.

That is why he felt so acutely the depth of the conflict between
Britain and Ireland, because the conflict was not only outside him
but inside himself. This is an aspect of Roger Casement's war-torn
life, which I believe I understand because I share it. I too have
been reborn not of the flesh but from the potent magic of the Irish
spirit, nowhere stronger than on Ulster soil, from an Englishman, or
an Ulster planter, into an Irishman, and I know that the rebirth
entails no light pangs of labour. Casement describes this travail of
soul in himself very movingly in a letter to Mrs. J. R. Green, dated
20th April 1906. He writes "If things go as I wish I shall be back
in Africa before long. 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" -he refers, of course, to King Leopold's crimes against
the black workers in the Congo rubber plantations- "I found also
myself, the incorrigible Irishman."

Now what does Roger Casement, up against the horrors of man's
inhumanity to man which he witnessed in the Belgian Congo, mean by
finding himself an "incorrigible Irishman."

Surely he means an incorrigible hater of tyranny, an incorrigible
lover of freedom and human brotherhood, and that at any time or age
means an incorrigible rebel translated into modern language and
conditions, up against the inhuman and would-be international tyranny
of Fascism, it is not far from meaning an incorrigible Socialist, for
as freedom broadens down from precedent to precedent so do the
enemies of freedom close their hellish ranks to deny and defeat it.
Can there be any doubt where Roger Casement would have stood to-day
in the great fight between tyranny and human freedom and equality in
which he stood so manfully in his own day for the oppressed negroes
of the Congo, and the freedom and dignity among the nations of his
own oppressed and subjugated Ireland. The causes of oppressed nations
and oppressed classes were then two causes, and Casement stood for
them separately, as it were, in separate compartments. But another
Irishman, James Connolly, saw their essential unity. "The cause of
oppressed nations and oppressed classes," said Connolly, "is
one and the same." Now in international Fascism, aggression
against free nations, and oppression and exploitation of the working
class have joined in one evil whole, for all to see. I ask you what
would Roger Casement, who fought for the tortured and exploited Congo
negroes, have thought of the crime against the independence of
Abyssinna and the crushing by poison-gas of that gallant resistance
of her badly-equipped people? What would Roger Casement have thought,
and where would he have stood in the inevitable sequel, when the
League of Nations failed to check, and ultimately condoned, this
hideous crime, and international Fascism felt itself strong enough to
make its insolent attack on the freely elected democratic government
of Spain? Would he have stood on the side of Monarchist generals and
cosmopolitan millionaires trying to stamp out freedom by the aid of
infidel Moorish mercenaries? Or would he have stood with Connolly for
the freedom of Spain, through the freedom and rise of status of its
working class, as Connolly stood for the freedom of Ireland through
the freedom of every Irish man and woman? There can be no doubt in
any sane mind of the answer to that question, and it is fitting that
we, met here as we are to honour Roger Casement's memory, should pay
him living honour by our living contribution by continuing the cause
for which he lived and died, rather than here dead lip-service.

"In those lonely Congo forests where I found Leopold, I also
found myself - the incorrigible Irishman." But &endash; someone
may ask &endash; are not many Englishmen and members of all nations
lovers of freedom and fighters against tyranny? Undoubtedly they are,
yet I think we have only to look at recent history, and to
investigate a peculiar quality of Irish psychology at its best, to
see that the Irish have some claim to supremacy as incorrigible
rebels.

An Englishman may see tyranny and hate it, with his whole soul,
but a certain discretion of mind remains in control of his soul and
often limits his action against the tyranny within limits of
prudence, not perhaps for any base motive of self-interest, or fear
of the consequences to himself, so much as from unwillingness to put
himself in the limelight and face the publicity inseparable from the
exposure.

There is in the best type of Irishman-and Casement had it in
supreme degree-a certain noble romanticism, a sense of the drama of
the fight of good against evil, which supports him with a sense of
the dramatic even if he stands single-handed against the world. The
English with their truly wonderful team spirit and their fear of
singularity or eccentricity, cannot understand it, and regard it as
vanity, as in smaller types it undoubtedly is, and often vanity of a
most disruptive and destructive nature. Perhaps there is no greater
curse in Ireland than your 'half-smart man,' with more intelligence
and indi-viduality perhaps than the average team-disciplined
English-man, but not enough to give him real vision. This quality
then in smaller types makes them "too big to be used and too small to
be useful," but in a man of Casement's calibre it lifts him above
himself, and for a great cause makes him careless of himself and his
own safety, while posi-tively enjoying the highest expression of his
own spiritual being. He becomes identified with his idea and enjoys
something of the bliss of union with something greater than himself,
which the Saints enjoy in time Beatific Vision. I shall have
something to say later on about Casement's death-I was within 50
yards of him in the Pentonville Hospital when he was hanged-and the
strong sense I got then that this sense of something greater, this
ecstasy or standing outside himself, supported Casement in death. For
the moment I want to stress this peculiar Irish quality of which I
think he was an outstanding ex-ample, this sense of his own drama in
taking his destined part in a great world-drama. I don't think the
English ever understand it and we don't always understand it
ourselves. In small men it may sink to love of the lime-light; but in
great men I think it may rise to what Christ meant when he told us
not to hide our light under a bushel but to set it on a candlestick.
And even the gallows proved nothing but a noble candlestick for Roger
Casement.

I am going to return again and again, as to what I believe is
called the "leit motif" running through a musical theme, to those
words of Casement's, "In those lonely Congo forests where I found
Leopold, I found also myself, the incorrigible Irishman," and I
am going to do so with a purpose which you will see before I have
finished, a purpose which will call upon you Irishmen gathered here
to-night, you Irishmen whose lives and work are cast for the present
in England, to honour Casement's memory in the most loyal and living
way that is possible, namely, by continuing Casement's work.

What was it that Casement found in those Congo forests? To quote
from the recent life of Casement written by Mr. Geoffrey Parmiter:
"The volume of reports concerning the horrible conditions on the
Congo was such, and public opinion in England was so inflamed that on
8th August, 1903, the Foreign Secretary, Lord Lansdowne, sent a
circular despatch to the English representatives accredited to the
Governments who were parties to the Act of Berlin, for communication
to those Governments. This despatch stated that the attention of the
Government had been repeatedly called to the conditions existing in
the Independent State of the Congo, both as regards the ill treatment
of natives and the existence of trade monopolies. A distinction was
drawn between isolated acts of cruelty committed by individuals and a
system of administration which involved systematic cruelty and
oppression. It was pointed out that it had been proved in the local
courts that many acts of cruelty had been committed, but in view of
the conditions it was fair to assume that the actual number of cases
of cruelty far exceeded the number of convictions obtained.

The reply of the Government of the Independent State of the Congo
was couched in a tone of sarcastic impudence and its reference to the
lack of adequate evidence in support of the charges made, left Lord
Lansdowne in no doubt as to what he should do.

Roger Casement was already in the Congo before the receipt of the
Belgian reply; he had been sent there by Lord Lansdowne to
investigate conditions and report on them as soon as possible. I can
only give short extracts indicating the appalling conditions which he
found.

"While at Bohobo Casement heard that a large influx from the
I........ district had taken place into the country behind G........
and thither he at once repaired, a distance of some 20 miles. He
found that these people had fled from the white man and taken up
their abode with their friends. 'They went on to declare,' writes
Casement, 'when asked why they had fled, that they had endured such
ill-treatment at the hands of the Government officials and the
Government soldiers in their own country that life had become
intolerable, and that nothing remained for them at home hut to be
killed for failure to bring in a certain amount of rubber, or to die
from starvation or exposure in their attempts to satisfy the demands
made upon them. 'The statements made to me by these people were of
such a nature that I could not believe them to be true. The fact
remained, however, that they had certainly abandoned their homes and
all that they possessed, had travelled a long distance, and now
pre-ferred a species of mild servitude among the KÉÉ. to remaining in
their own country!' He found these unfortunate refugees, industrious
and peaceable folk, engaged in various trades. Casement, followed by
his bull-dog, entered one of the blacksmith's sheds in which were
working ten women, six men, and five lads and girls, and sat down,
when five men came over to speak to him. He asked them why they had
left their homes, and sitting there in that rude hut, carefully and
patiently he took notes of their answers, repeatedly asking for
certain parts to be gone over again. They all gave as a reason for
leaving their homes that it was the rubber tax levied by the
Government posts. They were referring to the system which was
prevalent, whereby the natives were forced to bring in certain
definite quantities of rubber a week. The rubber was not paid for,
neither was the labour of collecting it, and if the natives failed to
bring in their quota they were severely punished. No effort was made
on the part of the authorities to conserve the rubber supply, with
the consequence that the rubber gathering labours of the natives
became increasingly more difficult and burdensome. When Casement
asked them if they would like to return home, they said that they
loved their country, but they dared not return home. At another group
of houses, an old chief gave him further details of the iniquities
practised by the white men, the Belgian administrators.

"He told Casement that the natives were sent out to get rubber,
and, if they returned with an insufficient amount, a European officer
would stand them in lines one behind the other and shoot them all
with one bullet. This took place actually in the stations of the
Europeans, and more often than not was done by white men. In all the
stations round about, Casement gathered further evidence of the
abominable conditions in which the natives were forced to live and
work, and his soul must have revolted within him. But in the later
part of his journey he came across things more unspeakable than
anything of which hitherto he had knowledge. That his experiences
during his Congo journey had a profound effect on him, we are well
aware from his diaries and letters to his friends, but we can only
vaguely guess what this effect must have been. Reading the cold print
of Casement's report to-day is disturbing enough, but to have heard
the oral testimony and to have seen the living evidence must have
been a rare torture to one of Casement's temper and sensitiveness."

Casement writes in his report " a careful investi-gation of the
conditions of native life confirmed the truth of the statements made
to me that the great de-crease in the population, the dirty and
ill-kept towns and the complete absence of goats, sheep or fowl-once
very plentiful in this country-were to be attributed, above all else,
to the continued effort made during many years to compel the natives
to work India rubber. Large bodies of native troops had formerly been
quartered in the district, and the punitive measures undertaken to
this end, had endured for a considerable period. During the course of
these operations there had been much loss of life accompanied, I
fear, by a somewhat general mutilation of the dead, as proof that the
soldiers had done their duty. Elsewhere Casement quotes a statement
by an officer of the Government service, that each time a corporal
was sent out to get rubber, so many cartridges were given to him. He
had to bring back all not used, and for every one used, he must bring
back a right hand. If a cartridge was expended at an animal in
hunting, a hand would be cut from a living man to make good the
deficiency.

Such were the conditions which Casement found in the Belgian
Congo. His report was published as a White Paper in 1904, and
Casement leaped from obscurity to international fame.

Naturally enough the report was not favourably received at the
Belgian Court, and a determined effort was made to discredit
Casement, even the Irish-Americans joining in the attack. But the
fury of these continuing onslaughts only increased Roger Casement's
reputation and prestige. On 30th June 1905, he received the CMG. His
report written in such moderate language is, with E. D. Morel's "Red
Rubber," a classic indictment of the conditions in the Congo under
the august rule of Leopold II, King of the Belgians. Out of the storm
of protest which the publication of the report aroused, was born the
Congo Reform Association. This association worked for nearly ten
years to bring about a better state of affairs in the Congo basin.

I have sketched, by quotations selected from Mr. Parmiter's book,
the part which Casement played in ex-posing perhaps the greatest
scandal of the last half of the nineteenth century. At the time I had
been through the South African War and, though I had experienced one
or two outbursts of the "incorrigible Irishman," and made some feeble
protests against having to ride up to a Boer farm and give the woman
of the house 20 minutes to put a few sticks of furniture on a wagon
before we set light to her house, I did not connect up all the crimes
and cruel-ties of Capitalistic Imperialism in one evil whole, derived
from one cause.

When I heard about the Congo atrocities, I remember being
bewildered and surprised. Surely, I thought, the men responsible for
such inhuman conduct must be excep-tions, degenerated below the norm
of the human species by too long a stay in a tropical climate or
segregation from gentle humanising influences. Vast as the organised
devastation of Kitchener had been in South Africa to starve the Boers
into surrender, we had not killed or mutilated human beings except in
fair fight; we had only slaughtered all the animals, burnt all the
houses, and carried the women off to concentration camps, where we
gave a specially low scale of rations to those whose husbands were
still in the field against us, and where actually the number of women
who died of disease was double the number of their men we killed in
battle.

Occasionally I had stirred in my doped sleep and gone to sleep
again; nor did the revelations of the Congo do more than make me
congratulate myself with truly British Pharisaism that we, the
British Army and Empire-exploit-ing class were not as other men were
or even as these degenerate Belgians.

In passing, let me say I am still a little puzzled as to how the
British as a race will come off in the great Day of Judgement of the
people and the rulers of the people that has obviously begun. I think
it is true that both as regards humanity and justice the British in
their dealings with subject peoples do maintain a code of decency
within limits, which may mitigate the judgement that is coining to
them and all the rulers of the earth. But I think it is equally true
that the British ruling class combine with a certain code of justice
and decency, a cunning in compromise and a hellish skill in ruling by
dividing subject nations and classes against themselves, which have
now reached their limits and, having been their strength, will now be
their undoing.

They of all people have reduced "Divide et impera", " Divide and
rule," to a fine art. In their dealings with subject nations, the
partition of Ireland is the outstanding instance of their method.
They planted their henchmen in Ulster and supported their own
privileged class in organising those henchmen in the Ulster
volunteers to resist not only the will of the Irish people but the
law constitutionally enacted by the British Parliament. Let us never
forget that it was in indignant resistance to that Fascist Revolt-the
first outcrop of naked Fascism in the world, organised by a
privileged class and supported mutinously by the officer east at the
Curragh, that. Roger Casement first came prominently to the front in
Irish politics. The rulers of Britain hanged him, while they honoured
Edward Carson. Lord Birkenhead, née Galloper Smith, helped to
hound Casement to his death. Well as Padraic Colum wrote:

They shall die to dust

Where you have died to fire,

Roger Casement.

Nor, I believe shall we have long to wait to see the feet of clay,
on which all the Empires stand precariously today, crumble into dust.
Perhaps for the British Em-pire the partition of Ireland may prove
the pit into which it will fall. Already we hear rumours of Defence
Pacts with the South, and newspapers, close in the councils of the
Government and the General Staff, hint broadly at the necessity share
in that work, in the raising and drilling of the Citizen Army-Ireland
alone in Western Europe repudiated as a reborn nation the mechanical
slaughter of the last great war and saved herself from conscription.
The fitting climax would be for Ireland to become united in united
resistance to inclusion in the next great war, not for her to achieve
a spurious unity for the convenience of the strategic needs of the
Empire. Casement had a favourite parable, expressing the relations of
Ireland and the Empire concerning a little fish called a Diodon,
which is occasionally swallowed alive and whole by a shark. And the
Diodon has been known to gnaw its way through the shark's belly,
emerging alive and unhurt, but leaving the shark dead. The
implication of that parable is plain, if we are to be continuous with
Casement's estimate of the relations of Ireland with the Empire. Our
job is to gnaw through the shark, to make no terms with British
Imperialism, not to gain our unity and a deceptive pretence of
freedom by lying down quietly in-side the shark's belly.

I have spoken of the skill of the British ruling class in ruling
subject nations by division. I have given the par-tition of Ireland
as the supreme illustration.

Now let me say a word about their similar skill in dividing
subject classes. The names of MacDonald and Thomas, coaxed, flattered
or indirectly bought to betray their class, immediately suggest
themselves. And the recent fate of Thomas suggests that the betrayal
of his own class as a prelude to being the agent of the ruling class
in the economic war on Ireland was a double though inter-connected
crime which brought its own nemesis in disgrace and exposure. I have
been struck by other instances of a nemesis which seems to pursue the
enemies of Ireland and strike, with a strange fitness of punishment
to crime, at those who slander Ireland's champions.

Thus it was Basil Thompson who circulated filthy stories about
Casement before and during his trial. And it was Basil Thompson, who
met his own downfall for alleged sexual improprieties committed in
Hyde Park. To say the least of it, to be the instrument of the
British ruling class in persecution of Ireland or Ireland's champions
seems unlucky.

We must now pursue our enquiry. As I said at the beginning this is
not a panegyric of Casement; it is an analysis. It seeks to be more
than an analysis. It seeks to be a synthesis of those qualities and
affiliations which Casement showed in his time, carried forward to
show us where Casement would stand if he were alive today, so that
though his body has smouldered away in quicklime in the yard of the
Pentonville hanging shed, we may honour his memory by co-operating
with his continuing spirit. The spirit of the dead continues; in
their own personal survival I hope and am inclined to believe, but
without doubt in their influence on the lives of the living. Their
influence can be for good or evil. If they are canonised and blindly
worshipped, if it is regarded as heresy or blasphemy to add a jot or
a tittle to their lives, they become mummified and petrified in their
own past and a positive obstruction to the continuance of their own
work in a growing, changing future.

I am not of the faith of the majority of this audience, yet I
think most of you will agree with me that, if the deep truths of
religion are to be preserved to-day, what is needed above all is a
religion, which, while standing firm as a rock on the eternal
verities, realises that the outer firm of those eternal verities
changes with the evolution of society. The fact of aristocracy may be
an eternal verity, but that aristocracy cannot be dependent on birth,
wealth and privilege, and any church which identifies itself with the
aristocracy of wealth and privilege must inevitably betray its
mission to lead the people into social forms which are a fuller
expression of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man.
Casement was an aristocrat of the spirit; in appearance he was kingly
and he had a courtesy of manner to high or low which was truly royal.
Yet his was the kind of aristocracy that led to the gallows as the
kingly spirit of Christ led Him to the gallows.

We hear stories of the ''reds,'' as Lord Rothermere calls them, in
Spain, firing at statues or images of Christ. I do not know if such
stories are true, though I do know that many of the stories of the
Rothermere press have been proved on investigation to be shameless
and deliberate lies. But even if this sad thing has happened, which
is the greater blasphemy? To fire at a stone or marble statue of
Christ or to bring thousands of Mahommedan mercenaries to butcher
living men, alleged to be made in God 's image, because they defend
their own freely elected democratic government?

Life never stands still and if we embalm the dead in the cerements
of their own time alone, we rob not only ourselves but them of their
influence, which, to live and grow, must obey the first law of life,
adaptation to chang-ing environment.

Therefore let us remember and understand the wise and penetrating
words of Connolly, "The true disciple is he who goes beyond his
master," and link them lip with the words of a greater than Connolly,
which have the same essential meaning, "for the letter killeth but
the spirit giveth life."

I think what Casement found, and what every man of any experience
finds, who faces life with his eyes honestly open, is that
Capitalism, though it may worship God in the letter-in the forms and
ceremonial observances of religion -in the spirit worships Mammon and
for the motive of profit will commit the most frightful, almost
incredible crimes, against God and man.

That is what Casement found in the Congo. May we not assume that
it was his reaction from these crimes committed for material profit,
and his realisation that the same motive of profit underlay the South
African and all Imperialist wars, that made Casement realise himself
as "an incorrigible Irishman." Even Mr. Parmiter, who has written a
very fine and sympathetic life of him finds him somewhat too
incorrigible for his taste.

"It was this championship of the oppressed," writes Mr. Parmiter,
"coupled with a devoted love for his native land, Ireland, that was
his guiding star all through his life but he suffered from the
inherent weakness and warped judgement of the fanatic."

How familiar one becomes with that note of patronising regret,
applied by those who make a nice compromise between God and Mammon to
those whose natures are so "fanatical" that they realise it is not
possible to serve both. I, myself, have one criticism and only one to
make of Casement. He loved his native land better than he loved
humanity. Though he recognised the international bearings of
Ireland's problem, he recognised it in terms of the balance of
Imperial Power and not in terms of the rise of International
Socialism to destroy all oppressive Empires. He sought to obtain a
guarantee of Ireland's independence by offsetting the German against
the British Empire. I knew what was in his mind before the
declara-tion of the Great War from his articles and personal talks
with him.

Casement wished to serve Ireland, not the Kaiser, but if I am to
present my admiration of the man with sincerity, I must not withhold
the criticism which I think is justified in the light of the past,
the present and the future. Casement did not see the interdependence
of Ireland's national freedom with the freedom of the International
Working Class. He might have said with Connolly: "We serve neither
King nor Kaiser, but Ireland," but he did not see that the inner
division of competitive anarchy and class subjection, which
constitutes the heart of capitalism, must first be reproduced on a
world scale, before any country can be free in the freedom of the
whole of its people. He did not see that there can be no peace under
capitalism.

He did not live to see, nor in his failure to analyse the essence
of capitalism did he foresee, the horrid phenomenon of Fascism,
trying to maintain the profits of Capitalism by crimes and cruelties
as black as those which he exposed in the Congo, but extending over
Europe, Asia and Africa. But there can be no shadow of doubt where
Casement, who stood, though in separate compartments, for the freedom
of oppressed nations and oppressed classes, would have stood against
the Fascism that seeks the permanent enslavement of both.

Is it too much to say today that a knowledge of Marxian
philosophy, sufficient to give spiritual anchorage in the swelling
world chaos and to see the destiny and mission of the working class
in emerging from that chaos, is necessary to keep any sensitive and
imaginative person from despair?

Mr. L. S. Woolf, a Liberal publicist, writes in his introduction
to " The Intelligent Man's Way to Prevent War":-

"During the war of 1914 to 1918 Europe took a big step on the road
back to barbarism; in the years 1923 to 1933 it has taken another and
even bigger step. What we are now witnessing and living through is a
rebellion of all that is savage in us, of all the savages in our
midst, against civilisation. The war was the first stage in this
decline and fall of Western Civilisation, and the shock which that
war gave to the whole of our society offered an opportunity to the
barbarians to carry their work of destruction a stage further. We are
at present in the middle of this second stage. The barbarians are
already in the ascendancy; they have broken through the frontiers of
civilisation and they are now destroying it from within."

In the above quotation Mr. Woolf tacitly identifies civilisation
with capitalism; and having failed to grasp that capitalism was
always inherently barbarous, is reduced to despair by the increasing
violence and barbarism accom-panying its decay, and the efforts of
Fascism to maintain its decaying and outworn existence.

He sees with horror the war waged by Fascism on all liberty and
all culture; but he fails to see the new forces that are arising in
the midst of the breakdown, and gaining new strength in the battle to
solve the problems which the existing ruling class has failed to
solve, and carry forward human culture to new heights.

Casement 's social analysis did not take Marx into account, but
his fidelity to Ireland earned him the glorious bodily death of a
martyr, not the death of the soul which so many of the liberal
bourgeoisie suffer today in the downfall of all their hopes and
ideals, which in their divorce from the new forces of the working
class seem to them to be dead beyond hope of resurrection. I think
Ireland gives that reward to her faithful sons- a goal to live for,
and a death continuous with the purpose of their life. Such a death
is robbed of terror. The night before Casement's execution, I was
transferred from Swansea Prison to Pentonville, put in the hospital
which is within fifty yards of the hanging shed and graciously
permitted to exercise in the hospital garden which extended to within
ten yards of Casement's new-made grave. The purpose of the
authorities was obvious, but failed entirely of its object. There was
a poor wretch, due to be hanged at Swansea for kicking his wife to
death, within a day or two of my transfer to Pentonville, and I was
dreading his execution with a sick horror beyond descrip-tion. It is
a terrible thing to be snatched out of life lived with no purpose and
forfeited for some surrender to brute passion.

But I felt no horror at Casement 's passing. I felt his death was
as purposeful as his life, and perhaps more powerful than his life
for the achievement of his purpose. And here I am, twenty years
later, helping, I hope, to achieve that purpose by doing what I can
to interpret the spirit of the man whose bodily remains lie in
Pentonville yard. I believe the British Government refused permission
for their transfer to Ireland. Luckily they cannot yet refuse
permission for the spreading of Casement's spirit in England. They
have hot yet reached that stage in the Fascist destruction of
culture.

It is our task to see that they never do reach it; and here I
believe the Irish in England, the Irish in Britain, have a vital part
to play. Let us be the incorrigible Irishmen that Casement realised
himself to be. But to play our part we must organise and make our
weight felt on concrete issues.

I believe we should act quickly. If we delay too long Fascism will
be upon us in England, as it is already upon us in Northern, and to
some extent, in Southern Ireland, robbing us of freedom of speech and
freedom to organise. Have you read the report of the N.C.C.L. of the
Civil Authorities Special Powers Act in Northern Ireland '? Such a
pseudo-legal instrument, giving elected Ministers power to depute
their authority to the military or police without appeal or redress,
is pure Fascism, and the recent Sedition Act in England is the thin
end of the wedge of the same thing.

We must resist the approach of Fascism before it is too late. We
must resist it as Irishmen, and as men, who are proud of being
Irishmen, because we believe Ireland, in fighting for her own
freedom, is fighting for the freedom of humanity.

I venture to give you six points on which I believe we can find a
basis of unity between all sections of true Irish Republicans, and
also a basis of unity with the forces of freedom and progress in
Britain. Here are the six points I suggest : -

(1) For a United Independent Irish Republic.

(2) For the withdrawal of the British troops from all Ireland, and
against the inclusion of Ireland in the war plans and preparations of
the National Government.

(3) For the immediate cessation of the economic war on Ireland,
and the abolition of the claim to annuities.

(4) For the repeal by the British Parliament of the Civil
Authorities (Special Powers) Acts which abrogate all constitutional
and civil liberty in Northern Ireland; and the withdrawal by the
Irish Free State Government of the Constitution Amend-ment (Public
Safety) Act, the use of which has been recently revived, and for an
amnesty of all persons imprisoned in Ireland under the operation of
these Acts.

(5) To protest against the disenfranchisement of the minority in
Northern Ireland through the Govern-ment 's gerrymandering of the
constituencies, and to demand the restoration of the former
con-stituencies and of Proportional Representation.

(6) For the surmounting of sectarian barriers by the initiation of
a joint campaign with the Trades Union Movement for the organisation
in British Unions of the Irish Workers in Britain, and by
co-operation with British movements against Fascism and War.

If you agree with them I suggest that at some future date you call
a joint meeting, with other Irish Republican organisations in London,
to endorse or amend them. And that if we can achieve unity amongst
ourselves, we extend it to co-operation with all the forces, whether
in Ireland or in this country, that are fighting the advance of
Fascism and the drive to inevitable war.

That, in my opinion, is the highest tribute we could pay to the
memory of Roger Casement, who died for his country, and to the last
was hounded down by the dark forces he had exposed in Africa.

Let us make the light shining from the candlestick of the
Pentonville gallows shine wider and brighter, and link its rays not
only with those of Connolly, of Fintan Lalor, Mitchell, Davis, and
Pearce, but also with those of every fighter for freedom past or
present.