His had been a rash adventure as well. Believing that by coming to Ireland from Germany he would be able, by himself, using pragmatic and rational arguments, to stop the Rising planned so secretly by the Military Council of the Irish Volunteers—Tom Clarke, Sean McDermott, Patrick Pearse, Joseph Plunkett, and one more—that not even the president of the Irish Volunteers, Professor Eoin MacNeill, had been informed. Wasn’t it another delirious fantasy? Reason doesn’t convince mystics or martyrs, he thought. In the bosom of the Irish Volunteers, Roger had been a participant in and witness to long, intense arguments regarding his thesis that the only way an armed action by the Irish nationalists against the British Empire would succeed was if it coincided with a German military offensive that would keep the bulk of British military power immobilized. He and young Plunkett had spent many hours in Berlin arguing about this without coming to an agreement. Was it because the heads of the Military Council never shared his conviction that the IRB and the Volunteers who prepared the insurrection hid their plans from him until the last moment? When, at last, the information reached him in Berlin, Roger already knew that the German admiralty had rejected a naval offensive against Britain. When the Germans agreed to send arms to the insurrectionists, he insisted on going in person to Ireland, accompanying the weapons, secretly intending to persuade the leaders that an uprising at this time would be a useless sacrifice. He had not been wrong about that. According to all the news he had been able to gather here and there since the days of his trial, the Rising was a heroic gesture, but it cost the lives of the most intrepid leaders of the IRB and the Volunteers and the imprisonment of hundreds of revolutionaries. The repression now would be interminable. The independence of Ireland had taken yet another step backward.
He had a bitter taste in his mouth. Another serious mistake: having put too much hope in Germany. He recalled his argument with Herbert Ward in Paris, the last time he saw him. His best friend in Africa from the time they met, both young and eager for adventures, he mistrusted all nationalisms. He was one of the few educated, sensitive Europeans on African soil, and Roger learned a great deal from him. They exchanged books, commented on their readings, talked and argued about music, painting, poetry, and politics. Herbert dreamed of being an artist exclusively some day and stole all the time he could from his job and dedicated it to sculpting human African types in wood and clay. Both had been harsh critics of the abuses and crimes of colonialism, and when Roger became a public figure and the target of attacks for his Report on the Congo, Herbert and Sarita, his wife, living in Paris where he had become an acclaimed sculptor who, for the most part, made castings in bronze, inspired by Africa, were his most enthusiastic defenders. And they were as well when his Report on Putumayo, denouncing the crimes committed by the rubber barons in Putumayo against the indigenous people, provoked another scandal around the figure of Roger Casement. Herbert had even shown sympathy at first for Roger’s nationalist conversion, though often in letters he joked about the dangers of “patriotic fanaticism” and reminded him of Dr. Johnson’s phrase, according to which “patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.” Their rapport came to an end on the subject of Germany. Herbert always energetically rejected the positive, beautified vision Roger had of Chancellor Bismarck, unifier of the German states, and of the “Prussian spirit,” which he thought rigid, authoritarian, coarse, hostile to imagination and sensitivity, and more akin to barracks and military hierarchies than to democracy and the arts. When, in the middle of the war, he learned from denunciations in the British newspapers that Roger had gone to Berlin to conspire with the enemy, he had a letter sent to him, through his sister Nina, putting an end to their friendship of so many years. In the same letter he let him know that his and Sarita’s eldest son, a boy of nineteen, had just died at the front.
How many other friends had he lost, people like Herbert and Sarita Ward, who had appreciated and admired him and now considered him a traitor? Even Alice Stopford Green, his teacher and friend, had objected to his trip to Berlin although, after he was captured, she never mentioned their disagreement again. How many others were repelled by him because of the vile things the British press attributed to him? A stomach cramp obliged him to curl up on his cot. He remained like that for a long time until the sensation of a stone in his belly crushing his intestines had passed.
During the eighteen months in Germany he often had wondered if he hadn’t made a mistake. But no, facts had confirmed all his theses when the German government made public a statement—written for the most part by him—declaring solidarity with the idea of Irish sovereignty and a desire to help the Irish recover the independence seized by the British Empire. But later, after long waits on Unter den Linden to be received by the authorities in Berlin, broken promises, his ailments, and his failures with the Irish Brigade, he had begun to doubt.
He felt his heart pounding, as it did each time he recalled those icy days of whirling snow storms when at last, after so many negotiations, he finally could speak to the 2,200 Irish prisoners in the Limburg camp. He explained, carefully repeating a speech he had rehearsed in his mind over months, that this wasn’t a question of “going over to the enemy camp” or anything like that. The Irish Brigade would not be part of the German army. It would be an independent military force with its own officers and would fight for the independence of Ireland from its colonizer and oppressor “alongside, but not inside” the German armed forces. What hurt him most, an acid that corroded his spirit unendingly, was not that of 2,200 prisoners only some 50 had joined the Brigade. It was the hostility his proposal encountered, the shouts and muttering when he clearly heard the words traitor, yellow, sold, cockroach, used by many prisoners to show him their contempt, and finally, the spittle and attempts at aggression directed at him the third time he tried to speak to them (tried, because he could say only a phrase or two before he was silenced by whistles and insults). And the humiliation he felt when he was rescued from a possible attack, perhaps a lynching, by his escort of German soldiers, who ran out of the camp with him.
He had been deluded and naïve to think the Irish prisoners would enlist in a brigade equipped, dressed—though the uniform had been designed by Roger—fed, and advised by the German army they had just fought, which had gassed them in the Belgian trenches, killed, maimed, and wounded so many of their companions, and had them now behind barbed wire. One had to understand the circumstances, be flexible, remember what the Irish prisoners had suffered and lost, and not feel rancor toward them. But that brutal collision with a reality he had not expected was very difficult for Roger. It had repercussions in his body as well as his spirit, for having lost almost all hope, he was struck down with the fevers that kept him in bed for so long.
During those months, the solicitous loyalty and affection of Captain Robert Monteith were a balm without which he probably would not have survived. The difficulties and frustrations found everywhere had no effect—not, at least, a visible one—on his conviction that the Irish Brigade conceived of by Roger would eventually become a reality and recruit into its ranks the majority of Irish prisoners, and Captain Monteith devoted himself enthusiastically to directing the training of the fifty volunteers to whom the German government had granted a small camp in Zossen, near Berlin. He even succeeded in recruiting a few more. All of them wore the Brigade uniform designed by Roger, including Monteith. They lived in field tents, had marches, maneuvers, and firing practice with rifles and pistols, but with blank bullets. Discipline was strict, and in addition to exercises, military drills, and sports, Monteith insisted that Roger continually give talks to members of the Brigade on the history of Ireland, its culture, its singularity, and the opportunities that would open for Ireland once its independence had been achieved.
What would Captain Robert Monteith have said if he had seen that handful of Irishmen from Limburg camp—freed thanks to an exchange of prisoners—file in as prosecution witnesses at the trial, among them Sergeant Daniel Bailey. Responding to questions from
the public prosecutor, all of them swore that Roger Casement, surrounded by officers of the German army, had exhorted them to go over to the enemy ranks, dangling as bait the prospect of freedom, a salary, and future earnings. And all of them had corroborated the flagrant lie that the Irish prisoners who gave in to his hounding and joined the Brigade immediately received better rations, more blankets, and a more flexible regime of furloughs. Captain Robert Monteith wouldn’t have become indignant with them. He would have said, once again, that those compatriots were blind or, rather, blinded by the poor education, ignorance, and confusion in which the Empire kept Ireland, placing a veil over their eyes regarding their true situation as a people occupied and oppressed for the past three centuries. One mustn’t despair, all of that was changing. And perhaps, as he did so often in Limburg and Berlin, he would tell Roger, to raise his spirits, how enthusiastically and generously young Irishmen—farmers, laborers, fishermen, artisans, students—had entered the ranks of the Irish Volunteers since the organization was founded at a great meeting in the Rotunda in Dublin on November 25, 1913, as a response to the militarization of unionists in Ulster, led by Sir Edward Carson, who openly threatened to disobey the law if the British parliament approved Home Rule. Captain Robert Monteith, a former officer in the British Army who had fought in the Boer War in South Africa and been wounded in two battles, was one of the first to enlist in the Volunteers. He was put in charge of the military training of recruits. Roger, who attended that emotional meeting in the Rotunda and was one of the treasurers of funds for the purchase of weapons, elected to that position of extreme confidence by the leaders of the Irish Volunteers, did not recall having known Monteith then. But Monteith assured him he had shaken his hand and told him he was proud it was an Irishman who denounced to the entire world the crimes committed against the indigenous peoples of the Congo and Amazonia.
He recalled the long walks he took with Monteith around Limburg Camp or along the streets of Berlin, at times in the pale, cold dawn, at times at dusk in the first shadows of the night, speaking obsessively about Ireland. In spite of the friendship that grew between them, he never succeeded in having Monteith treat him with the informality that exists between friends. The captain always addressed him as his political and military superior, granting him the right of way on paths, opening doors, placing chairs close to him, and saluting him before or after shaking his hand, clicking his heels, and bringing his hand martially up to his kepi.
Captain Monteith heard for the first time about the Irish Brigade Roger was attempting to form in Germany from Tom Clarke, the reserved leader of the IRB and the Irish Volunteers, and immediately offered to go and work with him. Monteith had been confined at the time in Limerick by the British army as punishment after it was discovered that he was giving clandestine military instruction to the Volunteers. Tom Clarke consulted with the other leaders and his proposal was accepted. His journey, which Monteith recounted to Roger in full detail as soon as they saw each other in Germany, had as many mishaps as an adventure novel. Accompanied by his wife in order to disguise the political content of his trip, Monteith left Liverpool for New York in September 1915. There the Irish nationalist leaders placed him in the hands of the Norwegian Eivind Adler Christensen (when he thought of it, Roger felt his stomach turn) who, in the port of Hoboken, secretly brought him aboard a ship that would soon leave for Christiania, the capital of Norway. Monteith’s wife remained in New York. Christensen had him travel as a stowaway, frequently changing berths and spending long hours hidden in the bilge, where the Norwegian brought him water and food. The ship was stopped by the Royal Navy in mid-crossing. A squad of British sailors boarded and examined the documentation of crew and passengers, searching for spies. For the five days it took the sailors to search the ship, Monteith jumped from one hiding place to another—at times as uncomfortable as squatting in a closet under piles of clothing and other times sunk in a barrel of tar—without being discovered. At last he disembarked secretly in Christiania. His crossing of the Swedish and Danish borders to enter Germany was no less novelesque and obliged him to use various disguises, one of them as a woman. When he finally reached Berlin, he discovered that the leader he had come to serve, Roger Casement, was ill in Bavaria. Not wasting a moment, he immediately took the train and when he arrived at the Bavarian hotel where Roger was convalescing, he clicked his heels, touched his head, and introduced himself with the words: “This is the happiest moment of my life, Sir Roger.”
The only time Roger recalled having disagreed with Captain Robert Monteith was one afternoon, in the military camp at Zossen, after he had given a talk to the members of the Irish Brigade. They were having tea in the canteen when Roger, for some reason he didn’t remember, mentioned Eivind Adler Christensen. The captain’s face transformed into a grimace of disgust.
“I see you don’t have a good memory of Christensen,” he said jokingly. “Are you angry with him for having you travel as a stowaway from New York to Norway?”
Monteith did not smile. He had become very serious.
“No, sir,” he muttered. “That’s not why.”
“Why, then?”
Monteith hesitated, uncomfortable.
“Because I’ve always believed he is a spy for British intelligence.”
Roger recalled that those words had the effect on him of a punch in the stomach.
“Do you have any proof of such a thing?”
“None, sir. Just a hunch.”
Roger reprimanded him and ordered him not to make such conjectures without proof. The captain stammered an apology. Now Roger would have given anything to see Monteith if only for a few moments to beg his pardon for having reproved him. “You were absolutely right, my good friend. Your intuition was correct. Eivind is something worse than a spy: he’s a real demon. And I’m a naïve imbecile for having believed in him.”
Eivind, another of the great mistakes in this final stage of his life. Anyone who wasn’t the “overgrown boy” that he was, as he had been told by Alice Stopford Green and Herbert Ward, would have detected something suspicious in the way that incarnation of Lucifer had entered his life. Not Roger. He had believed in the accidental meeting, in a connivance of fate.
It happened in July 1914, the same day he arrived in New York to promote the Irish Volunteers among the Irish communities in the United States, obtain support and weapons, and meet with the veteran fighters John Devoy and Joseph McGarrity, the nationalist leaders of the North American branch of the IRB, called Clan na Gael. He had gone out to walk around Manhattan, fleeing the humid, steaming little hotel room burning in the New York summer, when he was approached by a blond young man as handsome as a Viking god, whose amiability, charm, and confidence seduced him immediately. Eivind was tall, athletic, with a feline walk, deep blue eyes, and a smile between archangelic and raffish. He didn’t have a cent and let him know it with a comic grimace, showing him the inside of his empty pockets. Roger invited him to have a beer and something to eat. And he believed everything Christensen told him: he was twenty-four and had run away from his home in Norway when he was twelve. He had managed to travel as a stowaway to Glasgow. Since then he had worked as a stoker on Scandinavian and British ships on all the seas of the world. Now, stranded in New York, he barely managed to scrape by.
And Roger had believed him! On his narrow cot he pulled in his legs, in pain with another of those stomach cramps that took his breath away. They attacked in moments of great nervous tension. He controlled his desire to cry. Each time he felt sorry for and ashamed of himself to the point where his eyes filled with tears, he felt depressed and repelled afterward. He had never been a sentimental man given to displaying his feelings, he had always known how to hide behind a mask of perfect serenity the upheavals that shook his emotions. But his character had changed since he arrived in Berlin, accompanied by Eivind Adler Christensen, on the last day of October 1914. Had his being sick, broken, and with his nerves frayed contributed to the change? During his final months in
Germany especially, when in spite of the injections of enthusiasm with which Captain Robert Monteith wanted to inoculate him, he realized his project for the Irish Brigade had failed, began to feel that the German government distrusted him (perhaps thinking he was a British spy), and learned that his denunciation of the supposed plot of the British consul in Norway, Findlay, to kill him did not have the international repercussions he had expected. The final blow was discovering that his comrades in the IRB and the Irish Volunteers in Ireland hid from him until the last moment their plans for the Easter Rising. (“They had to take precautions, for reasons of security,” Robert Monteith reassured him.) Furthermore, they insisted that he remain in Germany and forbade him to join them. (“Think of your health, sir,” Monteith offered as an excuse.) No, they weren’t thinking of his health. They, too, were distrustful because they knew he opposed an armed action if it did not coincide with a German military offensive. He and Monteith took the German submarine, contravening the orders of the nationalist leaders.
The Dream of the Celt: A Novel Page 17