On This Day- Roger Casement

[joekilgobinet]

Today is anniversary of Sir Roger Casement (1864-1916) – A Human Rights Activist, Sir Roger Casement was an Irish Nationalist who attempted to smuggle arms into Ireland for the Easter Rising, but was captured and executed.


Roger Casement was born in County Dublin in September 1864. He joined the British Colonial Service and traveled to Africa and Brazil where he investigated the treatment of native workers. In 1911, Casement was knighted by King George V as Knight Bachelor for his efforts on behalf of the Amazonian Indians, before he retired from the service in 1912.

Casement helped found the Irish Volunteers with Eoin MacNeill in 1913. In September of 1914, in the light of the difficulties Britain was now facing in the war against Germany, Casement set out to gain support from Germany in the fight for Ireland’s independence.

In April 1916 he secured a supply of German ammunition and arms for the planned Easter Rising in Dublin. The arms were transported on a ship called the Aud while Casement followed in a submarine. The shipment was intercepted by British authorities and the crew scuttled the ship. When he was put ashore at Banna Beach in County Kerry he was arrested.

Roger Casement was taken to England and was sentenced to death by hanging. He was executed on the 3rd August 1916. In 1965 his remains were exhumed and returned to Ireland. They were re-interred in Glasnevin Cemetery on the 1st March after a State Funeral.

[Seán Ryan]

Thanks for the reminder.

...

I felt over there in America that my first duty was to keep Irishmen at home in the only army that could safeguard our national existence. If small nationalities were to be the pawns in this game of embattled giants, I saw no reason why Ireland should shed her blood in any cause but her own, and if that be treason beyond the seas I am not ashamed to avow it or to answer for it here with my life.

And when we had the doctrine of Unionist loyalty at last, "Mausers and Kaisers and any King you like," I felt I needed no other warrant than that these words conveyed - to go forth and do likewise. The difference between us was that the Unionist champions chose a path which they felt would lead to the Woolsack, while I went a road that I knew must lead to the dock.

And the event proves that we were both right. But let me say that I am prouder to stand here today in the traitor's dock to answer this impeachment than to fill the place of my accusers. If there be no right of rebellion against a state of things that no savage tribe would endure without resistance, then am I sure that it is better for men to fight and die without right than to live in such a state of right as this.

Where all your rights become only an accumulated wrong; where men must beg with bated breath for leave to subsist in their own land, to think their own thoughts, to sing their own songs, to garner the fruit of their own labours - and even while they beg to see these things inexorably withdrawn from them - then surely it is a braver, a saner, and a truer thing to be a rebel in act and deed against such circumstances as this than tamely to accept it as the natural lot of men.

My Lord, I have done. Gentlemen of the Jury, I wish to thank you for your verdict. I hope you will not think that I made any imputation upon your truthfulness or your integrity when I said that this was not a trial by my peers.

Sir Roger Casement's Speech in Court Following his Conviction as a Traitor

[Sam Lord]

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7H5aB5tePo"]The Lonely Banna Strand - (The Ballad Of Roger Casement) - YouTube[/ame]

[TotalMayhem]

Just a reminder, Mario Vargas Llosa's The Dream of the Celt is now available in English.

[Holly]

Raimund Weisbach was the captain of U-19 which brought Roger Casement to Ireland.

[TotalMayhem]

Raimund Weisbach was the captain of U-19 which brought Roger Casement to Ireland.

Video here

5 German seamen who served on U19, arrive at Dublin Airport as guests of the Irish Government during 1966 Irish proclamation of Independence anniversary celebrations 1966. Captain Raimund Weisbach, Walter Augustin, Captain Otto Walter, Hans Dunker & Frederic Schmidt shown.

Weisbach was also the torpedo officer on U 20. He prepared and fired the fatal torpedo which sank the Lusitania.

[5intheface]

Found this in old family papers, written by Pat McGroggan of Portglenone in the 1930s. Casement often stayed there with relatives in the country house which has been a Cistercian Monastery since the 1940s. The GAA club in Portglenone is called Roger Casements.


A lonely wave is beating on the rocky Antrim shore,
And a sighing wind is keening o'er the water's sullen roar.
The seabirds sweep to haven with a lonely piercing wail;
'Tis the passing knell for one who dies in a gloomy English jail.

Along the swelt'ring Congo, a ghastly silence falls,
The jungle trees hang lifeless like a thousand funeral palls
And dark-skinned men are heavy with a fear they cannot name,
While their gentle friend is led to death with mockery and shame.

Ah! Lordly Roger Casement, you gave all a man could give!
That justice be not mocked at and liberty might live.
But you hurt the high and mighty ones in pocket and in pride
And that is why they hated you and that is why you died.

The greedy ones, the greasy ones, they clutched their money bags
While the Irish peasant toiled and starved and his children froze in rags.
The screams of dying Negroes 'neath the lash and on the rack
Were muffled in the stifling folds of the sacred Union Jack.

Aye, they stripped you of your honours and hounded you to death
And their blood lust was not sated when you breathed your dying breath.
They've tried to foul your mem'ry as they burned your corpse in lime
But God is not an Englishman and truth will tell with time.

Ah! Gentle Roger Casement, you have left us in your debt!
They've tried to blot you from our minds but we will not forget.
For God sits high in heaven and your cause will yet prevail
Though your bones be trodden under foot in a gloomy English jail.

[Sam Lord]

Found this in old family papers, written by Pat McGroggan of Portglenone in the 1930s. Casement often stayed there with relatives in the country house which has been a Cistercian Monastery since the 1940s. The GAA club in Portglenone is called Roger Casements.


A lonely wave is beating on the rocky Antrim shore,
And a sighing wind is keening o'er the water's sullen roar.
The seabirds sweep to haven with a lonely piercing wail;
'Tis the passing knell for one who dies in a gloomy English jail.

Along the swelt'ring Congo, a ghastly silence falls,
The jungle trees hang lifeless like a thousand funeral palls
And dark-skinned men are heavy with a fear they cannot name,
While their gentle friend is led to death with mockery and shame.

Ah! Lordly Roger Casement, you gave all a man could give!
That justice be not mocked at and liberty might live.
But you hurt the high and mighty ones in pocket and in pride
And that is why they hated you and that is why you died.

The greedy ones, the greasy ones, they clutched their money bags
While the Irish peasant toiled and starved and his children froze in rags.
The screams of dying Negroes 'neath the lash and on the rack
Were muffled in the stifling folds of the sacred Union Jack.

Aye, they stripped you of your honours and hounded you to death
And their blood lust was not sated when you breathed your dying breath.
They've tried to foul your mem'ry as they burned your corpse in lime
But God is not an Englishman and truth will tell with time.

Ah! Gentle Roger Casement, you have left us in your debt!
They've tried to blot you from our minds but we will not forget.
For God sits high in heaven and your cause will yet prevail
Though your bones be trodden under foot in a gloomy English jail.

Well, that brightened up my day.

[5intheface]

Well, that brightened up my day.

Were muffled in the stifling folds of the sacred Union Jack.

I liked that.

[Ogiol]

A great man who by his doings showed that he had an open rational mind. How else could someone go from being an emmissary of the crown to a freedom fighter!

Read a fascinating book about him less than a year ago, cant find it now but I remember a poster here had already read it. It was something of an autobiography but not so!

[joekilgobinet]

W B Yeats wrote a poem demanding the return of Casement's remains

The Ghost Of Roger Casement by William Butler Yeats

O what has made that sudden noise?
What on the threshold stands?
It never crossed the sea because
John Bull and the sea are friends;
But this is not the old sea
Nor this the old seashore.
What gave that roar of mockery,
That roar in the sea's roar?

The ghost of Roger Casement
Is beating on the door.

John Bull has stood for Parliament,
A dog must have his day,
The country thinks no end of him,
For he knows how to say,
At a beanfeast or a banquet,
That all must hang their trust
Upon the British Empire,
Upon the Church of Christ.

The ghost of Roger Casement
Is beating on the door.

John Bull has gone to India
And all must pay him heed,
For histories are there to prove
That none of another breed
Has had a like inheritance,
Or sucked such milk as he,
And there's no luck about a house
If it lack honesty.

The ghost of Roger Casement
Is beating on the door.

I poked about a village church
And found his family tomb
And copied out what I could read
In that religious gloom;
Found many a famous man there;
But fame and virtue rot.
Draw round, beloved and bitter men,
Draw round and raise a shout;

The ghost of Roger Casement
Is beating on the door.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAN35eTkASk"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAN35eTkASk[/ame]

[TotalMayhem]

It looks like the Germans were running a regular u-boat shuttle service to the West coast of ireland.

Joseph Dowling landed in a small rubber dingy off a German U-Boat in the early hours of Friday, April 12th, 1918, off the coast of Co. Clare and landed on the beach at Crab Island, half a mile off the mainland. Realising that he was not in the right place, he managed to hail a passing fishing boat and get a ride to Doolin Point.

Links:

http://www.dowlingfamily.info/zOLD/M...FullStory.html

http://www.irishbrigade.eu/recruits/dowling.html

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

Where all your rights become only an accumulated wrong; where men must beg with bated breath for leave to subsist in their own land, to think their own thoughts, to sing their own songs, to garner the fruit of their own labours - and even while they beg to see these things inexorably withdrawn from them - then surely it is a braver, a saner, and a truer thing to be a rebel in act and deed against such circumstances as this than tamely to accept it as the natural lot of men.

My Lord, I have done. Gentlemen of the Jury, I wish to thank you for your verdict. I hope you will not think that I made any imputation upon your truthfulness or your integrity when I said that this was not a trial by my peers.

Have to say I thought this extract was magnificent in its wording. It tolls like a bell.

[C. Flower]

Very interesting review on the legacy of Casement's writings (in spite of the efforts of the Belgians and British authorities to incinerate them) in the Dublin Review of Books blog.

There is a reference to a secret British attempt to have Casement assassinated, as evidence that Finucane type assassinations were nothing new for the British.

The review writer sees Casement as an important anti-Imperialist writer (although that term is not used) who is still marginalised de to his counter-establishment beliefs and analysis.

Also - a number of Casement's papers including some important letters have been made available on line by the National Library of Ireland.

NLI archive