Roger Casement

“ The history of human freedom is written in letters of blood. It is the law of God. No people who clutch to safety, who shun death are worthy of freedom.
The dead who die for Ireland are the only live men in a free Ireland. The rest are cattle. Freedom is kept alive in man's blood only by shedding of that blood. It was not an act of a foreign Parliament they were seeking, those splendid "scorners of death," the lads and young men of Mayo, who awaited with a fearless joy the advance of the English army fresh from the defeat of Humbert in 1798. ”

“ Ireland might be bought or bribed, at any rate in this generation, to forfeit her national ideals and barter the aspiration that six centuries of contact with England have failed to kill; but the 350,000,000 of Indian mankind can never be, or bought, or bribed in the end.
Even if Ireland forgot the deathless words of Grattan, delivered in the subordinate Parliament of 1780, those words will find a response in the hearts of men who never heard of Grattan. For the voice of the Irish patriot was, in truth, a world voice—a summons to every audience wherever men gather in quest of freedom. ”

“ Not an Empire's ransom but the sum of an Empire's achievement, the cost of an Empire's founding, and to-day the chief bond of an Empire's existence. Detach Ireland from the map of the British Empire and restore it to the map of Europe and that day England resumes her native proportions and Europe assumes its rightful stature in the empire of the world. Ireland can only be restored to the current of European life, from which she has so long been purposely withheld by the act of Europe. What Napoleon perceived too late may yet be the purpose and achievement of a congress of nations. ”

“ It is an Empire in these straights 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 free men, and have no ill-will for Germany and a positive distaste for imperialism. ”

“ The London press has lately waxed indignant over Servia denied by Austria a port on the Adriatic, and we have been told a Servia without a port is a Servia held in "economic slavery," and that her independence is illusory unless she have free outlet to the sea. But what of Ireland? With not one, but forty ports, the finest in all Western Europe, they lie idle and empty. With over 1,000 miles of seaboard, facing the West and holding the seaway between Europe and America, Ireland, in the grip of England, has been reduced to an economic slavery that has no parallel in civilization. ”

“ It is England and English ambition that beget the state of mind responsible for the enormous growth of armaments that now over-shadows continental civilization. Humanity, hemmed in in Central Europe by a forest of bayonets and debarred all egress to the light of a larger world by a forbidding circle of dreadnoughts, is called to peace conferences and arbitration treaties by the very power whose fundamental maxim of rule ensures war as the normal outlook for every growing nation of the Old World. ”

“ The war of armaments cannot be ended by the disarming of the German people. To hand Europe over to a triumphal alliance of Russian and French militarism, while England controls the highways and waterways of mankind by a fleet whose function is "to dictate the maritime law of nations," will beget indeed a new Europe, but a Europe whose acquiescence is due to fear and the continued pressure of well-sustained force—a Europe submitted to the despotism of unnatural alliances designed to arrest the laws of progress. ”

“ Europe, without navies, without shipping became for England a mere westward projection of Asia, dominated by warlike peoples who could always be set by the ears and made to fight upon points of dynastic honour, while England appropriated the markets of mankind. Thenceforth, for the best part of a century, while Europe was spent in what, to the superior Britain were tribal conflicts, the seas and coasts of the world lay open to the intrusions of his commerce, his colonists, his finance, until there was seemingly nothing left outside the two Americas worth laying hands on. ”

“ For the pent millions of Europe there can be no peace, no laying aside of arms, no sincere development of trade or culture while one people, in Europe but not of Europe, immune themselves from all attack, and sure that whatever suffering they inflict on others can never be visited on their own shores, have it in their power to foment strife with impunity and to call up war from the ends of the earth while they themselves enjoy the blessing of peace. ”

“ Yes, there she stands, the Irish charwoman, the old broom in her hand and preparing for one last sweep that shall make the house sweet and fit for her own children. And John Bull, honest, sturdy John Bull, believing the house to be his, thinks that the only thing between him and the woman is the matter of wages; that all she wants is an extra shilling. Ireland wants but one thing in the world. She wants her house to herself, and the stranger out of her house. ”

“ The mistress of the seas will remain to ensure new combinations of enmity to prohibit the one league of concord that alone can bring freedom and peace to the world. The cause that begot this war will remain to beget new wars.
The next victim of universal sea-power may not be on the ravaged fields of mid-Europe, but mid the wasted coasts and bombarded seaports of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
A permanent peace can only be laid on a sure foundation. A sure foundation of peace among men can only be found when mastery of the sea by one people has been merged in freedom of the seas for all. ”

“ To find the causes of the war we must seek the motives of the combatants, and if we would have a lasting peace the foundations upon which to build it must be laid bare by revealing those foundations on which the peace was broken. To find the causes of the war we should turn not to Blue Books or White Papers, giving carefully selected statements of those responsible for concealing from the public the true issues that move nations to attack each other, but should seek the unavowed aims of those nations themselves. ”

“ But in both cases the antagonist of Europe, the non-European power is the same. The challenge of Europe must be to England, and the champion of Europe must be and can be only Germany. No other European people has the power, the strength of mind, of purpose and of arm to accomplish the great act of deliverance. Europe too long blinded to her own vital interests while disunited, must now, under the guidance of a united Germany, resolutely face the problem of freeing the seas.
That war of the seas is inevitable. It may be fought on a continent ”

“ If "America" will but see things aright, as a good "Anglo-Saxon" people should, she will take her place beside, nay, even a little in front of John Bull in the plunder of the earth. Were the "Anglo-Saxon Alliance" ever consummated it would be the biggest crime in human history. That alliance is meant by the chief party seeking it to be a perpetual threat to the peoples of Europe, nay, to the whole of mankind outside the allied ranks. And instead of bringing peace it must assuredly bring the most distracting and disastrous conflict that has ever stained the world with blood. ”

“ Why does Germany call so many youthful Germans to the colours? On what grounds of moral sanction does Great Britain maintain a navy, whose cost far exceeds all the burdens of German militarism?
Russia stretches across the entire area of Central Asia and comprises much of the greater part of Europe as well. In its own territory, it is unassailable, and never has been invaded with success. No power can plunder or weaken Russia as long as she remains within her own borders. Of all the great powers in Europe she is the one that after England has the least need of a great army. ”

“ That England to-day loves America, no one who goes to the private opinions of Englishmen, instead of to their public utterances, or the interested eulogies of their press, can for a moment believe.
The old dislike is there, the old supercilious contempt for the "Yankee" and all his ways. "God's Englishman" no more loves an American citizen now than in 1846 when he seriously contemplated an invasion of the United States, and the raising of the negro-slave population against his "Anglo-Saxon kinsmen." ”

“ Nothing advanced on behalf of England could meet the case for a free Ireland as stated by Germany. Germany would attain her ends as the champion of national liberty and could destroy England's naval supremacy for all time by an act of irreproachable morality. The United States, however distasteful from one point of view the defeat of England might be, could do nothing to oppose a European decision that could dearly win an instant support from influential circles—Irish and German—within her own borders. ”

“ 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 would 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." ”

“ To challenge English supremacy becomes not merely a threat to peace, it is an act of sacrilege. And yet this world-wide empire broad based upon the British Bible and the English navy, and maintained by a very inflexible interpretation of the one and a very skilful handling of the other, rests upon a sunk foundation that is older than both and will surely bring both to final shipwreck.
The British Empire is founded not upon the British Bible or the British dreadnought but upon Ireland. ”

“ The laws of progress demand that efficiency shall prevail. The crime of Germany has been superior efficiency, not so much in the arts of war as in the products of peace. If she go down to-day before a combination of brute force and unscrupulous intelligence her fall cannot be permanent. Germany has within herself the forces that ensure revival, and revival means recovery. Neither France nor Russia nor both combined, can give to Europe what Britain now designs to take from it by their help. ”

“ Ireland never is, but only always has been cursed by English rule. He himself, the Englishman of the day, is always a simple, bluff, good-hearted fellow. His father if you like, his grandfather very probably, misgoverned Ireland, but never he himself. Why, just look at him now, his hand never out of his pocket relieving the shrill cries of Irish distress. ”

“ Hemmed in by Russia on the East and the new Southern Slav States on the South-east, with a vengeful France being incited on her Western frontier to fresh dreams of conquest, Germany sees England preparing still mightier armaments to hold and close the seaways of the world. The Canadian naval vote, the Malayan "gift" of a battleship come as fresh rivets in the chain forged for the perpetual binding of the seas, or it might more truly be said, for the perpetual binding of the hands of die German people. ”

“ England is the landlord of civilization, mankind her tenantry, and the earth her estate. If this be not a highly exaggerated definition of British interests, and in truth it is but a strongly coloured chart of the broad outline of the design, then it is clear that Europe has a very serious problem to face if European civilization and ideals, as differing from the British type, are to find a place for their ultimate expansion in any region favoured by the sun. ”

“ European militarism rests on English navalism. English navalism requires for its continued existence a disunited Europe; and a Europe kept apart is a Europe armed, anxious and watchful, bent on mutual attack, its eyes fixed on the earth. Europe must lift its eyes to the sea. There lies the highway of the nations, the only road to freedom—the sole path to peace. ”

“ The defeat of the British navy would make scarcely at all easier the landing of German troops in, say, Australia, South Africa or New Zealand. A war of conquest of those far-distant regions would be, for Germany, an impossible and a stupidly impossible task.
A defeated England could not cede any of these British possessions as a price of peace, for they are inhabited by free men who, however they might deplore a German occupation of London, could in no wise be transferred by any pact or treaty made by others, to other rule than that of themselves. ”

“ Churchill's testimony can now be advanced as showing that the will of England alone comes in question as the exponent of peace, and that England for many years past has consciously assumed the rôle of an absolute and perfectly arbitrary judge of war and peace. It seems to us all the more significant that Mr. Churchill proposes also in the future to control, with the help of the strong navies of the Dominions, the trade and naval movements of all the Powers on the face of the earth—that is to say, his aim is to secure a world monopoly for England. ”

“ But to France the losses of this war, whether she win or lose, cannot be made good in a quarter of a century of child births. Whatever comes to Russia, to England, France as a great free power is gone. Her future function will be to act in a subordinate capacity alone; supported and encouraged by England she will be forced to keep up a great army in order that the most capable people of the continent, with a population no defeat can arrest, shall not fill the place in Europe and in the world they are called on surely to fill, and one that conflicts only with British aims and appetites. ”