Odd People

by Basil Thomson

  I told him that we were aware of his efforts to recruit Irish soldiers from internment camps to fight for the Germans and he said that he had not recruited them for the German but for the Irish Army; that the Kaiser’s proclamation to the Irish was conditional on an Irish Army being enrolled and, as to the oath of allegiance, many great Englishmen had had to break their oath for the sake of their country. He himself had never taken an oath of allegiance, but if he had it would not have weighed with him.

  He returned again to his object in coming to Ireland. It was to stop, not to lead, a rising which could only fail with the paltry aid that the Germans had sent. He wanted to prevent ‘the boys’ from throwing away their lives. He went on to say that in the early part of the war the Germans really believed that a rising in Ireland might be successful, but as they grew weaker this belief had begun to fade and now they had only the desire for bloodshed in Ireland as an embarrassment to the British government. He said that Germans would do things to serve the state which they would never do as private individuals and that in all the General Staff he had only met one gentleman. He seemed to regard the German cause as already lost. At the end of the interview he was sent to Brixton Prison to be placed under special observation for fear of an attempt at suicide. There was no staff at the Tower to guard suicidal cases.

  Some months earlier, when we first had evidence of Casement’s treachery, his London lodgings had been visited and his locked trunks removed to New Scotland Yard. Towards the end of the interview a policeman entered the room and whispered to me that Casement might have the key of the trunks. I asked him and with a magnificent gesture he said, ‘Break them open; there is nothing in them but clothing and I shall not want them again.’ But something besides clothing was found in one of the trunks – a diary and a cashbook from the year 1903 with considerable gaps. A few days later Casement must have remembered these volumes, for his solicitor demanded the surrender of his personal effects. Everything except these books was sent to him and there came a second letter, pointing out that the police must still be retaining some property. It is enough to say of the diaries that they could not be printed in any age or in any language.

  During a subsequent conversation Casement said, ‘You failed to win the hearts of the people when you had your chance.’

  I replied, ‘You are speaking for a minority of the Irish people. You must have had a rude awakening when you went to the internment camp to recruit men for the Irish Brigade.’

  He said, ‘I never expected to get many. I could have had them all if I had given them money, but though the Germans offered me as much money as I wanted I refused it. Besides, you were competing.’

  ‘How?’ I asked.

  ‘By sending the Irish prisoners more money and larger parcels than the English prisoners had.’

  Nothing would persuade him that this was not intentionally arranged by the British government: as a matter of fact, the parcels were supplied by a committee of Irish ladies.

  Casement struck me as one of those men who are born with a strong strain of the feminine in their character. He was greedy for approbation and he had the quick intuition of a woman as to the effect he was making on the people around him. He had a strong histrionic instinct. I have read many of his early letters. They are full of high ideals that ring quite true and his sympathy with the downtrodden and his indignation against injustice were instinctive; but, like a woman, he was guided by instinct and not by reason and where his sympathies were strongly moved it is very doubtful whether any reliance could be placed upon his accuracy. I have often wondered since how much exaggeration there was in his revelations about the Congo and Putumayo. Colleagues who served with him in his official days have told me that they never took his statements quite literally. They always allowed for an imaginative colouring.

  A few days before his execution he received a telegram from the person who had been most injured by his statement about Putumayo, imploring him at that solemn moment to retract his unjust charges. As far as I know, he did not reply to this telegram. I have made special inquiry with a view to ascertaining how long Casement had been under the obsessions disclosed in the pages of his diary and I feel certain that they were of comparatively recent growth, probably not much before the year 1910. This would seem to show that some mental disintegration had begun to set in, though it was not sufficient to impair his judgement or his knowledge of right and wrong.

  His success with the Germans was due to his curious power of investing others with his overweening belief in his own powers. During the Boer War, according to one of his colleagues, he persuaded the Foreign Office that he could counteract the Boer influence in Delagoa Bay and obtain full information about their activities. Accordingly, he was sent to Delagoa Bay from west Africa, but though he worked there for many months he accomplished nothing. His colleagues could never decide whether the curious swagger in his walk was due to self-satisfaction or to a physical peculiarity. When he visited their offices he preferred to walk about the room, but when he could be induced to sit down he had a way of laying his palms together with the fingers pointing upward that reminded them of the attitude of the praying mantis. In Delagoa Bay he showed no sympathy with the Boers or with the Germans, nor did he discourse upon the wrongs of Ireland, though the Foreign Office had to intervene once when he began to use stationery headed, ‘Consulate of Great Britain and Ireland’. He was excellent company and his colleagues were always glad to see him, though inwardly they were amused by the airs he assumed and the importance he attached to his sayings and doings. He was a good pioneer, a great walker, indifferent of his appearance and his dress and to the hardships he underwent when travelling on duty. He had a way of wearing his coat without putting his arms into the sleeves and he had his overcoat made without sleeves, possibly with an eye to the picturesque. He was a clear and forcible writer and was quite indifferent to money, though he kept his private accounts meticulously.

  Casement’s trial for high treason at the High Court will take its place among the most notable of state trials. Certain legal questions arising out of the fact that the acts of high treason had been committed abroad were argued at length. The Lord Chief Justice (Lord Reading), Sir F. E. Smith, the Attorney-General (now Lord Birkenhead) and Mr Serjeant Sullivan played their parts with great distinction. I was sitting just below the witness-box throughout the proceedings. At the luncheon adjournment, when the judge had left the bench, one of the Irish soldier witnesses who had been in the German camp on the occasion of Casement’s visit was left in the witness-box. Casement had just left the dock above his head. He was thirsting for a confidant and I was the only person within earshot. He jerked his thumb at the retreating figure and in a thick brogue made a very opprobrious remark about him.

  It is a curious fact that one of the revolvers brought over by Casement practically saved Dublin Castle. An officer of the Royal Irish Constabulary happened to be showing it to the Under-Secretary in the Castle on Easter Monday when he heard a shot fired and, looking out, he saw the sentry writhing on the ground and a ragged crowd rushing in at the gate. He had some cartridges in his pocket, with which he opened fire, keeping the rebels at bay for an hour and twenty minutes. Casement also brought with him a banner, which he intended to hoist over Dublin Castle. It was of green bunting made in Germany. It was last, I believe, in the possession of the headquarters of the Royal Irish Constabulary.

  It has never been quite clear to me why the Irish Rebellion was postponed from Easter Saturday to Easter Monday. There was a conflict of authority, as there usually is, in the Irish ranks. The failure to land the arms can scarcely have been responsible for the postponement because, as it proved, there was no lack of arms in Dublin. Since there was no rising on Easter Saturday, we thought it possible that the sinking of the Aud and the arrest of Casement might have had the effect of postponing it altogether. After midday on Monday the question of the arrest of the leaders was still under discussion, though at noon all telegraphic communication
with Ireland had been interrupted. It was not until three o’clock that we learned that the Dublin Post Office had been in possession of the rebels since noon, that another party had entrenched themselves in St Stephen’s Green and that there was heavy firing in the city. The rebels had hoped for simultaneous risings all over Ireland, but these failed to take place. It is significant that a police officer who went over to Tralee Bay to bring over witnesses for Casement’s trial had an ovation from the local farmers, who were delighted that the Rebellion had been put down.

  It is curious that among the things picked up in Tralee Bay was a document in German giving an account of the enemy losses at Verdun, a strange thing to find on a lonely Irish beach so long after the event.

  To Devoy in America came the Irish version of the Rebellion. The rebels put a bold face upon their failure. They said that Casement had sent a message to Dublin, begging them to defer the rising until he arrived. They admitted their bad staff work. They had counted upon 5,000 men in Dublin and secured only 1,500 and they were mostly men belonging to the Transport Workers rather than Sinn Feiners. In fact, there was a strong revolutionary element in the business. The reason why M’Neill had put off the rising from Saturday to Monday was the non-arrival of the munitions. Their main complaint was against the rebels in the south and west, who, though sufficiently armed to have done a good deal, did nothing. They did not even obey orders as regards the landing of munitions. They professed, however, to be pleased with the result of the Rebellion, because they said that for every man in favour of a rebellion before the rising there were now ten.

  Two months had scarcely elapsed when they were again planning rebellion. They felt sure of success if only they had sufficient arms and they demanded from the Germans an adequate supply under a strong military escort. On their side they undertook to supply 250,000 men after an initial success. They held out as an inducement to the Germans a Zeppelin base for operations upon England. On 17 June the Germans said they were ready ‘in principle’ to give further aid, but they wanted full particulars. Like other foreign invaders of Ireland, they had learned to distrust the organising ability of the Irish. On 31 December 1916 they promised a new supply of 30,000 rifles and ten machine guns, but this offer was declined by the Irish rebels unless the Germans would undertake to land a military force. The entry of America into the war prevented any further negotiations.

  CHAPTER 9

  STRANGE SIDESHOWS

  ALL THIS TIME we were living in the atmosphere of a ‘Shilling Shocker’ or, as the Americans call it, the ‘Dime Novel’. When one started work in the morning one could never tell what the day was to bring forth, what curious personage would be ushered into the room, what high adventure or what squalid little tragedy would be unfolded by some occupant of the low armchair. Vivid impressions trod close upon the heels of one another. It was like fragments of melodramatic films pieced together at random: all had to be carried in the mind until the case might be considered closed. Most of the actors in these dramas disappeared into outer space and then months later they would drift in again in some new drama, only to disappear finally after the Armistice.

  What has become of them all? What are all those spies and pseudospies now doing for a living? Where are all the temporary officers who were living riotously at the Savoy like butterflies that emerge untimely into the winter sunshine? Where are the girls that shared their revels during those purple weeks? Are they serving behind some counter? Have they pawned their jewellery and their furs? Or are they safely married in some suburban lodging and finding life a little flat? What has become of the young men who tore about the country in high-powered cars, who loved to use their cut-out while racing up the Mall? Do they now drive buses, or are they chicken-farming in Canada? The whole drama and all the actors have vanished, as they do in the real theatre ten minutes after the curtain has fallen. And where are the young women who used to take us elderly gentlemen by the elbow and help us into buses? Do they miss the toes of the passengers on which they used to tread; the uniform, the excitement of doing men’s work; or are they glad to be quit of it all and settle down to some less exciting occupation? These young people thought that there was to be a new heaven and a new earth in which the young would toil not nor spin but would have purses like the widow’s cruse. And the rest of us thought that there would certainly be a new earth – mostly made up of revolutions. As the war went on we began to realise that the real England – all the England that really mattered – was in northern France, in Gallipoli, in Salonika, Egypt and Mesopotamia.

  All the exciting events, from the point of view of police action, seem to have been crowded into 1915 and the early part of 1916. September was a notable month because we had at the same time the great forgeries of the ‘G’ series of Treasury notes, the seizure of the Austrian dispatches from the United States which were being carried by an American journalist and the Indian murder conspiracy.

  It had been reported to the police that the little active band of Indian revolutionaries who were working with the Germans in Berlin were running to and from Switzerland in connection with an extensive assassination plot. A seizure of documents late in August corroborated this. Whether the plot was devised by certain Indian revolutionaries or by the Germans themselves is not clear. The plan was to bring about the simultaneous assassination of the leading men in Entente countries. The names of the King of Italy, Lord Grey, Lord Kitchener, Mons. Poincaré, Mons. Viviani and Sr Salandro were specially mentioned. The bombs had been manufactured in Italy and were tested by the German military authorities at the military testing ground near Berlin. At the English end of the conspiracy were certain British Indians, one of whom was living with a German woman whom he declared to be his wife. An Englishwoman was known to be privy to their plans and a Swiss girl was the messenger between Switzerland and the English group. The case was one of extraordinary difficulty, because the real culprit, Chattopadhya, an Indian well known in Berlin, made only flying visits to Switzerland and was careful never to set foot on the soil of an Entente country. As soon as the available evidence was complete steps were taken simultaneously to detain all the persons who were in British jurisdiction. They were interned as persons dangerous to the safety of the realm and kept in internment until the Armistice, despite repeated appeals to the committee set up to revise internment orders made by the Home Secretary.

  About the examinations in my room there was never anything in the nature of what the Americans call the ‘Third Degree’, which, I understand, consists in startling or wearying the suspect into a confession. If they preferred not to answer questions they were detained until further inquiry could be made about them. In many cases it was the detention that influenced them. They were not sent to prison unless it was clear that their detention would have to be prolonged. There was a range of cells in the adjacent building of Cannon Row Police Station: one of these was furnished as a bed-sitting room and was known as ‘the extradition cell’: the others were the ordinary cells in which remand prisoners are placed after arrest. One has to put oneself into the suspect’s position in order to realise what this change of circumstances meant to him. He had been full of the excitement and interest of foreign travel, fresh from a voyage in a liner, where he was unsuspected and liked. Suddenly he found himself within four narrow walls, in silence and without the amenities of comfortable armchairs and tables. If he wished to write he might do so, but everything he wrote would be subject to scrutiny. He had, however, ample time for reflection and now that the first move must come from his side it was not long before he would send a request for another interview. If he did not he would, in course of time, be sent for, but the period of waiting without any fixed date usually had its effect.

  In the middle of October 1915 very definite evidence reached us of the extent of the German-Indian conspiracy and the length the conspirators were prepared to go. The Indian Committee in Berlin was established quite early in the war. After his expulsion from the United States Har Dayal, who had bee
n conducting the Ghadr (Mutiny) newspaper in California, went to Switzerland and on the outbreak of war he, Chattopadhya and some other Indian revolutionaries who were living in Switzerland went to Berlin. At first the Germans, feeling that they had them quite in their power, treated them with some contempt, but this attitude changed when one or two Germans who posed as Indian experts persuaded the government to found an Indian Committee to concert measures for starting a revolution in India under a German President. They had a press bureau and a regular working scheme for corrupting the loyalty of Indian prisoners of war. Still, though tons of paper and lakes of ink were consumed, no headway was being made until March 1915, when an Indian land-owner named Pertabr conceived the plan of going over to the Germans in the character of an Indian prince. He had some slight claim to this self-assumed title since he was the son of a deposed ruler of a small native state. Having obtained a passport from the Indian government on the backing of a man whose loyalty was unquestioned, he arrived in Switzerland from Marseilles and lost no time in communicating with Har Dayal, who took him to see the German Consul. Now it does not take much to deceive a German official about oriental matters. Pertabr wore native dress and was aloof and condescending. In fact, his haughtiness was exactly what the German Consul would have expected from a Rajah. When pressed to enter the Fatherland Pertabr declared firmly that he would not cross the German frontier until he had a promise that the Kaiser would receive him in person. This arrangement suited Har Dayal admirably, for he would become the intermediary between the two potentates and the springs of money would begin again to flow. After several journeys to and from Berlin an audience was arranged. It was characteristic of the German Consul that he besought Pertabr in all humility to say a good word for him to the All Highest when he should enter the Presence.