45 6 Appendix VI 



the Irish language — for I see in your book that you realized how the 

 language, too, had been marked out for destruction. So very few English- 

 men, even friends of Ireland politically, ever knew or dreamed there was 

 such a thing as an Irish language ! This leaflet I wrote some years ago 

 (1905) for propagandist purposes in the North of Ireland — and it went 

 broadcast over National Ulster and is still going. When the momentary 

 collusion of English Whig and Tory has passed away, and a resurgent 

 and free Ireland emerges, with a Volunteer Army to guard and keep its 

 liberty, rest assured that army of a recovered Ireland will not be used " as 

 a new weapon of offence in English hands against the freedom of the world 

 elsewhere." Wherever I go to-day in Ireland (and I go widely) I say that 

 we stand in the forefront of human freedom — fighting a battle that is 

 world-wide — and that altho' we fight it to-day with unarmed hands we 

 shall see the day when we'll fight it with armed manhood. 



I came over to London only about the Irish Volunteers, and now I 

 return to Ireland, glad to have seen you and talked with you. When I get 

 back to Malahide I will send you a letter I recently wrote to the Irish 

 press on that very point — in which I cite Egypt and India. Meantime I 

 hope the flamboyant appeal in this leaflet for the old tongue of Ireland 

 will not shock you. It was written for popular gatherings — in a style 

 they like — and it is always something to get them, in Ireland, to read 

 at all. Yours sincerely, 



Roger Casement. 



Ill 



City of Dublin Steam Packet Co.'s 

 R.M.S. Ulster, 



May 16, 1914. 

 Dear Mr. Blunt, 



The inclosed article from to-day's " New Statesman " may interest you. 

 I have not any idea of the identity of the writer — but he, or she, is fairly 

 right in the line of criticism. Whoever it is has read the Dublin papers 

 because they only, I think, had your letter; and they only, I know, had 

 the quotation I have marked with double lines which is from a speech of 

 mine at Tullamore on the 19th April, to a great Volunteer gathering. I 

 am now returning to Ireland and shall go to Ulster very soon, and try to 

 get the Ulster Nationalists — Protestant and Catholic — pledged to fight 

 against Exclusion and any " clean cut." 



I am taking over an air gun — to shoot pellets — in the sure and certain 

 hope it will be seized by the Customs at Kingston on arrival. The people 

 who cannot prevent 20,000 (or 50,000) rifles with 3,500,000 cartridges 

 from being imported by special vessel into Ulster are powerful elsewhere ! 

 The grave and unprecedented outrage in Ulster goes unchecked, unchal- 

 lenged, and unpunished — and I'd wager 5 to 1 my boy's air gun, this 

 evening, will be triumphantly confiscated and the packet of pellets too. 



I am more and more convinced that Asquith and Co. mean to betray 

 Home Rule after they have got their Parliamentary Act put to the test, 

 by successfully passing a bare and empty formula. The " Amending 



