The Dream of the Celt: A Novel (48 page)

While John Devoy studied the proposal, Roger was still dedicated to promoting the Irish Volunteers and their militarization. He became a good friend of Colonel Maurice Moore, inspector general of the Volunteers, whom he accompanied on his tours around the island to see how training was carried out and if the weapons caches were secure. At the request of Colonel Moore, he joined the general staff of the organization.

He was sent to London several times. A clandestine committee operated there, presided over by Alice Stopford Green, who, in addition to collecting money, arranged in Britain and several European countries for the secret purchase of rifles, revolvers, grenades, machine guns, and ammunition, which she had smuggled into Ireland. At these London meetings with Alice and her friends, Roger observed that a war in Europe had stopped being a mere possibility and become a reality in progress: all the politicians and intellectuals who frequented the historian’s evenings at Grosvenor Road believed Germany had already reached the same conclusion, and they didn’t wonder whether there would be a war but when it would break out.

Roger had moved to Malahide, on the coast north of Dublin, though because of his political travels he spent few nights at home. Soon after he settled there, the Volunteers warned him the Royal Irish Constabulary had opened a file on him and that he was being followed by the secret police. One more reason for him to leave for the United States: he would be more useful there to the nationalist movement than if he remained in Ireland and was put behind bars. John Devoy indicated that the leaders of
Clan na Gael
approved his coming. Everyone believed his presence would accelerate the collection of donations.

He agreed but delayed his departure for a project that intrigued him: a great celebration on April 23, 1914, of the nine-hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Clontarf, when the Irish under Brian Boru defeated the Vikings. MacNeill and Pearse supported him, but the other leaders saw in this initiative a waste of time: why squander energy on an operation of historical archaeology when the important thing was the present? There was no time for distractions. The project didn’t materialize, and neither did another initiative of Roger’s, a campaign to collect signatures asking that Ireland participate in the Olympic Games with its own team of athletes.

As he prepared for the journey, he continued speaking at meetings, almost always with MacNeill and Pearse, and sometimes Thomas MacDonagh, in Cork, Galway, Kilkenny. On St. Patrick’s Day he stood on the platform in Limerick, addressing the largest public meeting he had ever seen. The situation worsened day by day. The Ulster unionists, armed to the teeth, openly held marches and military maneuvers until the British government had to take action, sending more soldiers and sailors to the north of Ireland. Then the Curragh Mutiny took place, an episode that would have a significant effect on Roger’s political ideas. At the height of the mobilization of British soldiers and sailors to put a stop to a possible armed action by the ultras of Ulster, General Sir Arthur Paget, commander-in-chief of Ireland, informed the British government that a good number of British officers at the Curragh military camp had told him that if he ordered them to attack Edward Carson’s Ulster Volunteers, they would ask to resign their commissions. The British government gave in to the blackmail and none of the officers was sanctioned.

This event shored up Roger’s conviction: Home Rule would never be a reality because in spite of all its promises, the British government, whether conservative or liberal, would never accept it. John Redmond and those Irish who believed in Home Rule would be frustrated time and time again. This was not the solution for Ireland. Independence was, pure and simple, and that would never be granted willingly. It would have to be seized through political and military action, at the cost of great sacrifices and great heroism, just as Pearse and Plunkett wanted. That was how all the free peoples in the world had obtained their emancipation.

In April 1914, the German journalist Oskar Schweriner arrived in Ireland. He wanted to write some articles on the poor of Connemara. Since Roger had been so active helping the villagers during the typhus epidemic, Schweriner sought him out. They traveled there together and visited the fishing villages and the schools and dispensaries that were beginning to operate. Then Roger translated Schweriner’s articles for the
Irish Independent
. In conversations with the German reporter, who supported the nationalist cause, Roger reaffirmed the idea he’d had on his trip to Berlin, to connect Ireland’s struggle for emancipation to Germany if an armed conflict broke out between her and Great Britain. With this powerful ally, there would be more possibilities of obtaining from Britain what Ireland with her limited means—a pygmy against a giant—would never achieve. Among the Volunteers the idea was well received: it wasn’t novel, but the imminence of war gave it new currency.

Under these circumstances, it was learned that Edward Carson’s Ulster Volunteers had succeeded in secretly bringing into Ulster, through the port of Larne, 216 tons of weapons. Added to the ones they already had, this shipment gave the unionist militias a power far superior to that of the nationalist Volunteers. Roger had to accelerate his departure for the United States.

He did, but first he had to accompany Eoin MacNeill to London to meet with John Redmond, the leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party. In spite of all the reversals, Redmond was still convinced that Home Rule would eventually be approved. He defended the good faith of the Liberal British government. A stout, dynamic man, he spoke very quickly, machine-gunning his words. The absolute self-confidence he displayed helped increase the antipathy he inspired in Roger. Why was he so popular in Ireland? His position that Home Rule ought to be obtained in cooperation and friendship with Britain enjoyed the support of the majority of the Irish. But Roger was certain this popular confidence would begin to disappear as the public saw that Home Rule was an illusion used by the imperial government to keep the Irish deceived, demobilizing and dividing them.

What irritated Roger most at the meeting was Redmond’s statement that if war broke out with Germany, the Irish ought to fight alongside Britain as a matter of principle and strategy: in this way they would gain the confidence of the British government and British public opinion, which would guarantee Home Rule in the future. Redmond demanded that twenty-five representatives of his party be on the executive committee of the Volunteers, something the Volunteers were resigned to accepting in order to maintain unity. But not even this concession changed Redmond’s opinion of Roger Casement, whom he accused periodically of being a “radical revolutionary.” In spite of this, during his final weeks in Ireland, Roger wrote two friendly letters to Redmond, exhorting him to act so that the Irish could remain united in spite of their eventual differences. He assured him that if Home Rule became a reality, he would be the first to support it. But if the British government, because of its vulnerability to the Ulster extremists, could not impose Home Rule, the nationalists ought to have an alternative strategy.

Roger was speaking at a meeting of the Volunteers in Cushendun on June 28, 1914, when the news came that a Serbian terrorist had assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in Sarajevo. At that moment no one there attributed much importance to an episode that, a few weeks later, would be the pretext that unleashed the First World War. Roger’s last speech in Ireland was given in Carn on June 30. By now he was hoarse from speaking so much.

Seven days later he sailed, clandestinely, from the port of Glasgow on the ship
Cassandra
—the name was a symbol of what the future held for him—bound for Montreal. He traveled in second class, under an assumed name. He had also altered his clothing, generally elegant and now extremely modest, and his face, changing the way he combed his hair and cutting his beard. Now after so much time, he spent some tranquil days on board. During the crossing, he told himself in surprise that the agitation of recent months had the virtue of calming his arthritic pains. He practically had not suffered from them again, and when they did return they were more bearable than before. On the train from Montreal to New York, he prepared the report he would make to John Devoy and the other leaders of
Clan na Gael
regarding conditions in Ireland and the need of the Volunteers for financial assistance to buy weapons, for considering how the political situation was evolving, violence could break out at any moment. Then, too, the war would open an exceptional opportunity for Irish supporters of independence.

When he reached New York on July 18, he stayed at the Belmont, a modest hotel frequented by Irishmen. That same day, walking along a street in the burning heat of the New York summer, his encounter occurred with the Norwegian, Eivind Adler Christensen. A casual encounter? That’s what he believed then. Not for an instant did he suspect it could have been planned by the British espionage services who had been following him for months. He was certain his precautions to leave Glasgow in secret had been sufficient. And he had no suspicion at the time of the cataclysm this young man of twenty-four would cause in his life: his physical appearance was not at all that of the helpless vagrant half dead of hunger he claimed to be. In spite of his shabby clothing, Roger thought he was the most beautiful, attractive man he had ever seen. As he watched him eating the sandwich and sipping the drink he had invited him to have, he was confused, ashamed, because his heart had begun to pound and he felt an excitement in his blood he had not experienced for some time. He, always so careful in his gestures, so rigid an observer of good manners, was on the point several times that afternoon and evening of violating good form and following the inducements assaulting him to caress those muscular arms with their golden down or to grasp Eivind’s narrow waist.

When he learned that the young man had no place to sleep, he invited him to his hotel. He took a small room for him on the same floor as his. In spite of the accumulated fatigue of his long journey, that night Roger didn’t close his eyes. He savored and suffered imagining the athletic body of his new friend immobilized by sleep, his blond hair tousled and that delicate face, with its very light blue eyes, resting on his arm, sleeping perhaps with lips open, showing his white, even teeth.

Having met Eivind Adler Christensen was so powerful an experience that the next day, at his first appointment with John Devoy, with whom he had important matters to discuss, that face and figure returned to his memory, distancing him for moments at a time from the small office where they talked, overwhelmed by the heat.

The old, experienced revolutionary, whose life resembled an adventure novel, made a strong impression on Roger. He carried his seventy-two years with vigor and transmitted an infectious energy in his gestures, movements, and way of speaking. Taking notes in a small notebook with a pencil whose point he periodically wet in his mouth, he listened to Roger’s report on the Volunteers without interrupting, but when he stopped he asked innumerable questions, requesting details. Roger marveled that John Devoy was so extensively informed about what went on in Ireland, including matters supposedly kept absolutely secret.

He was not a cordial man. He had been hardened by his years in prison, by clandestinity and struggle, but he inspired confidence, the sense that he was frank, honest, and held granite-like convictions. In that talk and those they would have for the rest of the time he remained in the United States, Roger saw that he and Devoy coincided point by point in their opinions on Ireland. Devoy, too, believed it was too late for Home Rule, that now the only objective of Irish patriots was emancipation, and that armed actions would be an indispensable complement to negotiations. The British government would agree to negotiate only when military operations created a situation so difficult that granting independence would be a lesser evil for London. In this imminent war, approaching Germany was vital for the nationalists: her logistical and political support would give the independence movement greater efficacy. Devoy told him that in the Irish community in the United States, there was no unanimity in this matter. John Redmond’s theses also had partisans here, even though the leadership of
Clan na Gael
agreed with Devoy and Roger.

In the days that followed, Devoy introduced him to most of the organization’s leaders in New York, as well as John Quinn and William Bourke Cockran, two influential North American lawyers who lent assistance to the Irish cause. Both had relationships with high circles in the executive branch and the U.S. Congress.

Roger noted the good impression he had made on the Irish communities when, at John Devoy’s request, he began to speak at meetings and gatherings to collect funds. He was known for his campaigns in defense of the indigenous peoples of Africa and Amazonia, and his rational, emotive oratory reached every member of the public. At the end of the meetings where he spoke, in New York, Philadelphia, and other East Coast cities, contributions increased. The leaders of
Clan na Gael
joked with him that at this rate they’d become capitalists. The Ancient Order of Hibernians invited him to be the main speaker at the largest meeting in the United States that Roger took part in.

In Philadelphia he met another of the great nationalist leaders in exile, Joseph McGarrity, a close collaborator of John Devoy’s in
Clan na Gael
. In fact, Roger was in his house when they heard the news of the successful covert unloading of fifteen hundred rifles and ten thousand rounds of ammunition for the Volunteers at Howth. The news provoked immense joy among the leaders and was celebrated with a toast. A short while later he learned that after the unloading, there was a serious incident at Bachelor’s Walk between Irishmen and British soldiers of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers Regiment, with three dead and more than forty wounded. Was the war beginning, then?