The King, the Kaiser, and Irish freedom

Front matter

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Preface

This book is made necessary by the studied violations of neutrality on the part of certain Anglo-American newspapers, by the misrepresentation of the true spirit of Irish nationality at home and abroad, by the vilification of Germany, the infamous distortion of the truth by various writers and, above all, by the growing probability that this section of unfair America, by no means in a majority, will destroy all hope of the United States becoming the arbiter at the end of the European war. The German people must understand that the Anglo-American newspaper is without real influence among the people and that in this war it does not represent the true state of public opinion.

The Cologne Gazette, perhaps one of the most important newspapers in Germany, declares that the atrocious falsehoods of the American press render impossible all hope of American intervention for peace and destroys all possibility of America having part in the settlement after the war, thus relegating our country to a most inferior position. We are regarded as a vassal of England and have lost our influence as a neutral state. Bishop Von Keppler, of Bavaria, the most eminent Catholic prelate of Germany, is quoted as confirming the view of the Cologne Gasefte, which adds:

"American neutrality has been favorable to Great Britain, and America has lost our confidence and must be rejected as an arbitrator."

James K. McGuire.

New York, March, 1915.

ENDORSEMENT

James K. McGuire is peculiarly fitted and especially endowed to write a book friendly to Germany. The first education he received in Syracuse was in a German school and his next schooling took place in the German school then in the basement of the Lutheran church in Butternut Street, Syracuse, New York. It is thirteen years since Mr. McGuire left Syracuse. During the thirty years he lived in our midst, no man occupied a warmer place in the hearts and affections of the German people. Long time Mayor of Syracuse, he always held the support of the German people, irrespective of party ties. It is perfectly natural for him to defend German ideals and causes, for he is a student and writer on German history, philosophy and poetry, as well as a firm friend and son of Ireland with an international reputation.

(Signed) Alex. E. Oberlander.

Editor and Publisher of the Deutche Union,

Syracuse, New York,

Contents

CHAPTER PACE

I. Sir Roger Casement's Mission to Germany 15

II. Emperor William of Germany . . 29

Conclusion

Postscript

PAGE 177

219 230 240

275 287

ILLUSTRATIONS James K. McGuire Frontispiece

FACING PAGB

Emperor William of Germany 29

Robert Emmet 58

Sarah CuRRAN 172

Theobold Wolfe Tone 177

Daniel O'Connell 183

John Mitchel 197

Michael Davitt 254

Charles Stewart Parnell ...... 270

CHAPTER I SIR ROGER casement's MISSION TO GERMANY

The visit of Sir Roger Casement to the German foreign office at Berlin last November created considerable interest in America and no little consternation in England. Sir Roger Casement rep resented the real Nationalists in his visit and was selected by them as ambassador because he was known as a tried friend of the movement for the independence of Ireland.

The first newspaper to announce the result of his mission was the official organ of the German foreign office, the Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, which, on November 20, 1914, made the following announcement :

The well-known Irish Nationalist, Sir Roger Casement, who recently arrived in Berlin from the United States, was received at the Foreign Office. Sir Roger Casement pointed out that there had been circulated in Ireland statements, apparently authorized by the British Government, to the effect that a German victory would inflict great injury upon the Irish people. Their land, their habitations, their churches, and their priests would be handed over to the tender mercies of an army of invaders, whose only motives were plunder and conquest. Recent assertions of Mr. Redmond on the occasion of his recruiting tour through Ireland, as well as manifold editorial statement of the British press in Ireland, had, so Sir Roger explained, been widely circulated, and had naturally occasioned among the Irish fears respecting the attitude of Germany toward Ireland. In the event of a German victory. Sir Roger asked for a convincing declaration about Germany's intentions toward Ireland, such as might restore the equanimity of his fellow-countrymen throughout the world, but especially in Ireland and America, in view of the disturbing statements circulated from responsible British quarters. The Acting Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs thereupon made the following official statement on behalf of the Imperial Chancellor :

"The Imperial Government rejects with the utmost decision the evil intentions ascribed to it in the assertions quoted by Sir Roger Casement. The government takes this opportunity of making the categorical assurance that Germany cherishes only sentiments of good will for the prosperity of the Irish people, their land, and their institutions. The Imperial Government declares formally that Germany would not invade Ireland with any intentions of conquest or of the destruction of any institutions. If, in the course of this r war, which Germany did not seek, the fortune of arms "(^^ should ever bring German troops to the coasts of Ireland, they would land there, not as an army of invaders coming to rob or destroy, but as the fighting forces of a government inspired only by good will toward a land and a people for whom Germany only wishes national prosperity and national freedom."

The above statement was officially confirmed by the German Chancellor at Berlin, the German Foreign Office, and it was sent out officially by wireless from Berlin to London and America, via wireless to Sayville, Long Island, which is the only means of direct communication between Germany and the United States, since England cut the cables. Of course, very little news of this important declaration reached the country so seriously affected by it — deceived Ireland. Since the declaration of war by England against Germany, the Irish have been daily frightened into the belief that a German invasion would mean wreaking frightful atrocities on helpless women and children, the destruction of their homes and properties, and such cruelties as, they were fooled into believing, occurred hourly in Belgium. The bogies and the conjuring of the "German acts of barbarism" by Redmond, Devlin and O'Connor were the principal bits of stage property they had been using to secure recruits for the British \ [17]

army. To lose this precious and essential bit of scenery would destroy the great act in the recruiting drama. In America the declaration ended the last hopes of Redmond's following, the remnants of the United Irish League vanished into thin air, the proposed meetings were called off and a feeling of solidarity among Irish Nationalists was created. Redmond stood aghast over this news, which, despite press censors, was filtering through, penetrating parts of Ireland and interfering with the recruiting programme. A few days of silence passed, when the London cables informed the Anglo-American press that poor Casement was insane and had been suffering from ill health, that he had been long a loyal son of Great Britain and was deserving of the greatest pity for his derangement. Observing Americans replied that while, possibly, Sir Roger Casement might have, according to English reports, a few "bats in his belfry," that there was no question about the brainy headpiece of the / German Government and that ''national freedom" for Ireland, with the aid of Germany, was no evidence of brainstorm. The evident plight of the English Government was pitiful while the real Irish Nationalists rejoiced.

*v

The writer has been at some pains in investigating the record of Sir Roger Casement. His career is one of which any man might well feel proud. He is fifty years of age, born in County Antrim, near Belfast, an Ulster Protestant and a staunch friend and supporter of Irish independence. He has held important positions in the British foreign service without a blemish on his private or official record.

In 1895 he was British Consul; for West Africa and Consul to the Congo Free State, which position he occupied for eleven years. He was sent to Brazil in 1906, declined the consul generalship of the West Indies in 1907 and was made consul general for Brazil in 1909.

His diplomatic ability and commercial specialization are of the highest order and he would have been elevated to the chief diplomatic posts but for his well-known view that his own country, Ireland, could only work out her destiny by separation from England. This was the same view held by the rebel of 1848, Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, who rose to the position of Premier of Australia and who, to the day of his death, hoped to see the green flag flying over a free Ireland. Six weeks after the war broke out, Sir Roger

Casement sent this letter to the Irish newspapers :

Let Irishmen and boys stay in Ireland. Their duty is clear — before God and before man. We, as a people, have no quarrel with the German people. Germany has never wronged Ireland, and we owe her more than one debt of gratitude. It was not a German steamship company that, last summer, with the assent of the government making the contract, broke public faith with the Irish people and abandoned its pledged service with the port of Cork. But it was a German steamship company that tried to make good the breach of public trust and the injury to Irish trade that the Cunard Company had committed, and the British Postmaster-General, Admiralty, and Board of Trade had connived at. And it was another British department that made representation at Berlin, in behalf of English trade jealousy, and caused the German Emperor to intervene to induce the Hamburg-American line to substitute Southampton for Queenstown — a British for an Irish port. The hated German was welcome when he came to an English port — his help and enterprise were out of place when directed to assisting Irishmen to better means of intercourse with the outside world.

Sir Roger Casement is an Irishman of the purest patriotic gold. We take no pride in the constant allusions by England to her great military and naval commanders who are born in Ireland.

They are Tories and are opposed to the freedom of their own coun.try. No patriotic Irishman rejoices in Lord Kitchener, Lord Roberts, Rear Admiral Callaghan or in the military genius of the Duke of Wellington. These men fought for England alone and never for Ireland. They were given their reward by England and no shrine is visited in Ireland which venerates their names. In bitterness of feeling toward Nationalist Ireland, these Irish saviours of England have outdone the descendants of Cromwell. It is not so with the able Irishman whose name heads this chapter, Roger Casement.

PROPHETIC

Extracts from the writings of Sir Roger Casement and written before the war:

Without Ireland there would be to-day no British Empire. The vital importance of Ireland to England is understood, but never proclaimed by any 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 set aim of every English government from the days of Henry VIII onwards.

Napoleon, too late in St. Helena, realized his error :

"Had I gone to Ireland instead of to Egypt the empire of England was at an end."

The power of the British fleet can never be permanently restrained until Ireland is restored to Europe. Germany has of necessity become the champion of European interests as opposed to the world dominion \ of England and English-speaking elements. She is toj day a dam, a great reservoir rapidly filling with human life that must some day find an outlet. England instead of wisely digging channels for the overflow has hardened her heart, like Pharaoh, and thinks to prevent it or to so divert the stream that it shall be lost and drunk up in the thirsty sands of an ever expanding Anglo-Saxondom. German laws, German language, German civilization, are to find no ground for replenishing, no soil to fertilize and make rich.

^ England relies on money. Germany on men. And just as Roman men beat Carthaginian mercenaries, so

i must German manhood, in the end, triumph over Brit- [ ish finance. Just as Carthage in the hours of final shock, placing her gold where Romans put their gods, and never with a soul above her ships, fell before the people of United Italy, so shall the mightier Carthage of the North Seas, in spite of trade, shipping, colonies, the power of the purse and the hired valor of the

f' foreign (Irish, Indian, African), go down before the

\ men of United Germany.

In order to make sure the encompassing of Europe with a girdle of steel it is necessary to circle the United States with a girdle of Hes. With America true to the policy of her great founder, an America "the friend of all Powers but the ally of none," English designs against European civilization must in the end fall. Those plans can succeed only by active American support, and to secure this is now the supreme task and aim of British stealth and skill. Every tool of her diplomacy, polished and unpolished, from the trained envoy to the boy scout and the minor poet, has been tried in turn. The pulpit, the bar, the press, the society hostess, the Cabinet Minister and the Cabinet Minister's wife, the ex- Cabinet Minister and the royal family itself, and last, but not least, even "Irish Nationality" — all have been pilgrims to that shrine, and each has been carefully primed, loaded, well-aimed, and then turned full on the weak spots in the armor of republican simplicity. To the success of these resources of panic the falsification of history becomes essential and the vilification of the most peace-loving people of Europe. The past relations of England with the United States are to be blotted out, and the American people, who are by blood so largely Germanic, are to be entrapped into an attitude of suspicion, hostility, and resentment against the country and race from whom they have received nothing but good. Germany is represented as the enemy, not to England's indefensible claim to own the seas, but to American ideals on the American Continent.

Just as the Teuton has become the "Enemy of Civilization" in the Old World because he alone has power, strength of mind, and force of purpose to seriously dispute the British h*^gemony of the seas, so he is assiduously represented as the only threat to American hegemony of the New World.

The birds of the forest are on the wing.

It is an empire in these straits that turns to America, through Ireland, to save it. And the price it offers is — war with Germany. France may serve for a time; but France, like Germany, is in Europe, and in the end it is all Europe and not only Germany England assails. Permanent confinement of the white races, as distinct from the Anglo-Saxon variety, can only be achieved by the active support and close alliance of the American people. These people are to-day, unhappily, republicans and freemen, and have no ill-will for Germany and a positive distaste for imperialism. It is not really in their blood. That blood is mainly Irish and German, the blood of men not distinguished in the past for successful piracy and addicted rather to the ways of peace. The wars that Germany has waged have been wars of defence, or wars to accomplish the unity of her people. Irish wars have been only against one enemy, and ending always in material disaster, they have conferred always a moral gain. Their memory uplifts the Irish heart; for no nation, no people, can reproach Ireland with having wronged them. She has injured no man.

And now, to-day, it is the great free race of this common origin of peace-loving peoples, filling another continent, that is being appealed to by every agency of crafty diplomacy, in every garb but that of truth, to aid the enemy of both and the arch-disturber of the Old World. The jailer of Ireland seeks Irish- American support to keep Ireland in prison; the intriguer against Germany vi^ould win German-American good-will against its parent stock. There can be no peace for mankind, no limit to the intrigues set on foot to assure Great Britain "the mastery of the seas."

BRITISH PLOT TO MURDER SIR ROGER CASEMENT

FAILS

Sir Roger Casement expected to leave Berlin in February, 1915, for Christiania, Norway, to lay the proofs before the Norwegian Government of a conspiracy to capture and return him to England or kill him, the chief conspirator being Mansfield DeC. Findlay, the British Minister to Norway, who endeavored to bribe a servant in the employ of Sir Roger, one Adler A. Christenson, a Norwegian, who was to receive at least $25,000 as a reward for his treachery and betrayal of his master, if successful. Sir Roger Casement has shown copies of the correspondence exposing the conspiracy to the German Foreign Office and photographic copies are being sent by Sir Roger to his friends on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. He is regarded by the British Government in exactly the same light as Robert Emmet and other patriots who were swung to their death from British scaffolds. If captured and brought to England, this patriotic Irishman will be charged with high treason to the Crown and executed. Fearing that the difficulties of capturing him could not be surmounted, the British Minister to Norway instructed Christenson to lure Sir Roger Casement to a point on the coast, where a British ship could run in and get him, "or, still better, knock him on the head." Announcement is officially made from the Berlin Foreign Office that the discovery of the conspiracy has been submitted to the American Ambassador and that copies will be sent to Secretary of State Bryan, at Washington. England must get rid of Casement at any cost, for he represents the true spirit of Irish nationality, which is the faith and hope of the sons and daughters of the Celts and the Gaels throughout the world.

The English spy system has been developed to an extraordinary degree. There are few pages of Irish history free from the sinister story of the spy and the informer. Where the system of paid spies fails, the lure of British gold to bribe the servants of illustrious Irishmen to betray their masters is a common occurrence in the history of the British Empire. The servant of Sir Roger Casement proved incorruptible, otherwise another Irish patriot would have been destroyed.

UNANSWERABLE

If the Kaiser wanted to break the peace of the world, why should he have waited until his country was ringed round with hostile alliances? If he wanted war with his present opponents, why did he refrain from urging war on England when the English armies were engaged in sanguinary combat with the Boer Republic or with the Russians during their life and death struggle with the Japanese hosts ? Is he not the only great ruler in the world who kept his country at peace from the beginning of his reign and for more than a quarter of a century?

EMPEROR WlLLlAAi UE GERMANY

"They have forced the sword into my hand. I cannot do otherwise."

Chapter II Emperor William Of Germany

'*Sie haben mir das Schwert in die Hand gedriickt: ich kann nicht anders." ("They have forced the sword into my hand. I cannot do otherwise.")

These were the words from the lips of the Kaiser as the command went forth to the German people to defend the Fatherland against the nations who had hemmed them in. The patriotic reply was unanimous and instantaneous. No such evidence of the solidarity of a great nation, faced by a common danger, is furnished by the world's history. The dulled legions of Russia responded slowly while revolutions burst forth throughout the vast Russian Empire. England declared war on Germany with her cabinet split in twain, the war denounced in Parliament, followed by sedition in Ireland, protests in Canada, armed rebellion in the Transvaal and Orange State, mutinies in India and revolution in Egypt. The government of Portugal is still in a state of disorder oyer its entrance to the war theatre. The divisions in Turkey are apparent.

In Germany the people are united. All party lines have fallen — to be rebuilt after the war along new alignments, but nozv the motto is "One for all — all for one." While the whole world, with mixed feelings and bated breath, watches its most interesting figure — the Kaiser. They contrast that strong figure and resolute face with the weak apparitions and mediaeval figures of King George and the Czar of the Russias, and they find in the Emperor the very embodiment of the German progress and efficiency which earned the hate and jealousy of the mistress of the seas. All of the numerous German political divisions have been unified in support of the Kaiser — the great Socialist party, the Catholic party (the centre), the Conservatives, Poles, National Liberals and Progressives.

The private life and domestic virtues of William of Germany typify in their practice the dominant and indestructible features of all that is best in the German character. He is one of the few kings in the history of the world untainted by scandal or weakened by vice. His afifection for his family, his devotion to his friends, his abstemious habits, the Spartan simplicity of his personal living, are admired by all observers. He rises at five in the morning, works many hours of the day and night and is Emperor in fact as well as in name. His motto is, "Rest means rust." He finds time for simple amusements, outdoor exercise, and visitors find him one of the freshest and most alert men in Europe. No one more than he realizes that the German problem is economic, and therefore he studies all important works of political economy and is the keenest student on a throne of the progress of governments. He went to war, as he believed, to save the future of Germany. Mr. Andrew Carnegie said, "The Emperor was the most sorrowful man in the world when he realized that war could not be averted."

For three centuries religious differences had created a sharp cleavage in the German states. Fierce and prolonged wars had been fought between sects of Christians. Under the reign of the present ruler, Protestants, Catholics and Jews live together in the greatest harmony. The broad spirit and tolerance of the Emperor, his catholic view of all worshippers or non-believers, are contrasted with the religious persecutions sponsored by the Czar of Russia and the French Government. The latter drives the nuns from France during the same period that the Jews are being persecuted and murdered in Russia. The King of England refuses to permit his army to enforce the terms of a Home Rule Bill, thrice voted by Parliament, lest the law be followed by armed rebellion in the name of religion. Under Emperor William, for twenty-six years Germany has known religious peace.

Chapter III England Lengthening The American Bread Line

Sympathy for the Belgians is general in America and England has taken every advantage of that feeling to hide her tracks in the work of destroying American commerce on the high seas. The average American citizen is a curious combination of the Yankee trader and the sentimentalist. More than any other nation, we are carried off our feet by great gusts of sympathy for a stricken people. This was the case with the downfall of Poland, of Hungary, and of Ireland. Only two foreigners that the writer recalls have been permitted to address the Congress of the United States. One was Kossuth, the Hungarian patriot; the second, Charles Stewart Parnell, the Irish leader.

But we soon forget our sympathy and reaction sets in when the principal American nerves, the pocket nerves, ache and throb too long. He is blind indeed who fails to see that the German cause has greatly advanced in the month of January, 1915, in all sections of the United States. Not only is Thought gradually working itself clear, but the American who wants to be fair is beginning to warm toward the side where 100,- 000,000 people struggle against 700,000,000, and with the products of the rest of the world aiding this huge majority and neutral countries working overtime supplying the allies alone with armament and war supplies. Overtopping all, the American is commencing to realize that canny England, not Germany, is depriving the United States of her commerce. Never does a German man-of-war seize an American ship for contraband. All of these outrages have been perpetrated by the ruler of the seas. At last Uncle Sam is awake and is questioning England, as he questioned her in 1861, and the average citizen is sitting up and taking notice of the answer.

The cotton planters down South last year, who sold Germany 2,350,000 bales of cotton, are forgetting some of Belgium's horrors in their own woes as they realize that the British embargo cut off the German and Austrian market, drove cotton down to famine prices, enabled the shrewd English cotton mill buyers to get cotton at a frightful loss to the American planter and at a huge profit to the English buyer. Your cotton planter is writing letters by the thousands now telling how the English worked the most successful trade trick known to man and, after making the planter practically give away his cotton, then lifted it from the contraband list so that Germany and Austria would pay more. But all at the expense of the cotton growers of the South. The sunburnt man under the soft wool hat in Dixie is digging up his school histories these days to remind his neighbors of Marion the Swamp Fox who hunted the British redcoats out of South Carolina, and he is reading up the riflemen of the swamps and forests of the Southland who drove the last remnants of Great Britain from the United States in 1815, when Andrew Jackson, the son of an expatriated Irish linen weaver, from Carrickfergus, defeated Pakenham at New Orleans. And when he considers his cotton losses and the history of his country, his viewpoint of Germany changes wonderfully.

Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of State, writing to Ambassador Pinckney at London, said: "Great Britain might feel the desire of starving an enemy nation, but she can have no right of doing it at our loss nor of making us the instrument of it."

Great Britain has destroyed the commerce of the United States, an innocent party in the war, with Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey, and to an important extent with neutrals like Denmark, Holland and Italy. Her policy of starving Germany out is actually creating more cases of starvation in the United States than in Germany. There are few unemployed in Germany, because the government has succeeded in paying wages, through public and private work, to all left at home.

Let us see why so many workmen in American agricultural implement factories are idle. Last year Germany bought of us $3,000,000 worth of mowers and reapers; hay rakes, $64,000; planters, $20,000; plows, $213,000; threshers, $261,- 000. At $2.50 per day in wages, that loss accounts for nearly 5,000 idle men. In brass goods she took $1,642,000, which loss throws 2,000 brass workers out of work. Starving out the Germans and Austrians will cost the farmers of the United States not less than $40,000,000 in a year.

Germany absorbs one-half of the exported [36]

American wood alcohol used in the arts. Last year she with Austria took $50,000,000 of our copper and copper wares. Averaging the wages of the Montana and Michigan miners at $4 per day, that means 40,000 copper miners and workers added to the bread line. In bleached cotton cloth she took from us $1,260,000; cotton waste, $1,000,000; corsets, $88,000; mixed goods, $178,- 000; phosphate, $2,700,000; binder twine, $91,- 000; dried apples, $1,208,000; ripe apples,$l,209,- 000; apricots, $800,000; peaches, $170,000; prunes, $2,110,000; glue, $78,000; rubber goods, $1,200,000; shoes, $132,000; iron and steel products, $4,800,000; adding machines, $370,000; cash registers, $1,200,000.

Now figures are usually dry reading and we will not continue, but the statement can be safely made that England, by declaring practically everything contraband intended for Germany and Austria, excepting cotton, has thrown out of employment and reduced to a state of want from 350,000 to 450,000 men, to say nothing of the fearful curtailment of trade an'd traffic in other directions.

The oldest living Americans recall the days when the American flag flew over thousands of fast clippers, when more than three-fourths of the commerce of our country was carried in American bottoms. He reads from his history how England took advantage of the Civil War to seize American trade and, having destroyed our commerce as our country lay prostrate, the oldest citizen is surprised at the present generation, which seems supine and helpless to protect its own products from the dominant power on the high seas. Men are asking themselves, at this hour, by what right does England persist in destroying our commerce, making an innocent nation suffer and increasing the store of human misery in this country. The patriotic American is insisting on an answer to the query why American products on the high seas should not be held as sacred as though they were on land. The world may be suffering from Militarism, but America surely is declining because she is held at the mercy of a relentless foreign Navalism.

The American war of 1812 with England was due chiefly to British interference with our export trade. The writer has read the famous debate from the annals of Congress in January, 1812. John Randolph, of Virginia, denounced the bill to increase the army. He denounced his