1916 (21 page)

This support from the Clan was almost immediately threatened by John Redmond’s claim, as the elected leader of the Irish people, to control a majority of the representatives on the governing body of the Volunteers. Redmond and his followers were so hated and distrusted by the people in the Clan and the IRB that the matter of support for the Volunteers was seriously questioned (and the integrity of those IRB members of the board who had acquiesced seriously challenged). The physical force movements in both Ireland and the United States were in danger of splitting over this issue. Devoy and McGarrity consulted throughout June as to what to do. Judge O’Neill Ryan, a Clan member from St Louis, Missouri, summed up the dilemma:

I do not know where ‘we are at’ on this Volunteer question. If the reports in the
Gaelic American
of last week are correct … we have lost control of the situation in Ireland, and it has passed into the hands of Redmond,
et al.
, which would mean that moneys raised here would be under their control. In other words, we will be co-operating with the UIL [United Irish League] in this country to raise funds for an organisation which they will control and emasculate.
²¹

It seemed to be an irresolvable problem. Devoy was in touch with Tom Clarke in Dublin and concluded that Hobson had been the key to the surrender to Redmond. McGarrity heard from MacNeill who made a strong appeal for support from America. He thanked McGarrity for the money that had been sent and said that, more than money, what were needed were arms and ammunition, that the British government’s proclamation forbidding the importation of arms was illegal, and that the unionists in Ulster and Britain had forced Irishmen to take precautions to defend their rights. He concluded with a strong appeal to friends of Ireland in the United States:

It is surely plain to the minds of every friend of Ireland and of Liberty that a unique and supreme call has gone forth, and that the one great opportunity of an age has arisen for the service of a sacred cause. We in Ireland do not hesitate to ask you our kinfolk in a land where freedom was won in no small measure by Irish valour and Irish devotion to liberty and by the outpouring of Irish lifeblood – rather we entreat and beseech you to join with us, making the grand effort of our lives and shrinking from no sacrifice that the peril and the hope of so great a crisis may demand.
²²

It was an appeal that was hard to resist, despite the mistrust and sense of betrayal. In these circumstances it was fortuitous that Sir Roger Casement, the distinguished humanitarian and retired member of the British consular service, arrived in the United States to represent the Provisional Committee to raise funds for the Irish Volunteers. Casement had sailed on the
Cassandra
to Montreal and was in New York by 18 July. Startled by the animosity toward Hobson and those members of the Provisional Committee who had voted to accept the Redmond members, Casement worked hard to convince Devoy, McGarrity, and other Clan leaders that, given Redmond’s prestige and political domination in Ireland, there had been no alternative but to accept the participation of his nominees on the Provisional Committee – no choice, short of a destructive public fight. Casement assured Devoy and the Clan leadership that the loyal and reliable IRB members of the Provisional Committee would still hold the key positions and that when guns were obtained they would be placed in the hands of reliable elements. ‘As it is we have kept the Volunteer body intact – and if we can get guns into the hands of, say, a dozen chosen corps it will revolutionise the mind of the whole country’ he told Devoy.
²³
Although wary, Devoy was convinced of Casement’s sincerity and good intentions.

Whatever lingering misgivings the Clan leaders had about the intervention of Redmond and his followers into the Volunteer organisation, in the end they continued to support it. Casement travelled along the eastern seaboard and as far west as Chicago, meeting Irish leaders and speaking to Irish groups, even meeting Theodore Roosevelt. He was a particularly effective publicist for the Volunteers. Devoy recorded that $50,000 was raised specifically for the Volunteers by the Clan and that roughly another $50,000 was sent to the IRB in the years before the 1916 Rising.
²⁴

Many of the anxieties that people had about the Volunteers were overshadowed by the momentous events that occurred at the end of July and early August of 1914. First of all, 1,500 rifles and ammunition that had been purchased in Germany were run into Howth harbour by Erskine Childers on 26 July and Kilcoole, in Co. Wicklow, by Conor O’Brien several days later. These were organised by Casement’s circle of friends in Dublin and London, although the £1,000 sent in June helped to finance the purchase. The gun-running had an electrifying effect among the Irish in the United States, and as Bulmer Hobson wrote in his history of the Volunteers, the organisation never again lacked funds. Casement quoted Devoy as saying that the gun-running was ‘the greatest deed done in Ireland in 100 years’.
²⁵
Secondly, the attempt by the police and British army troops to seize the weapons as the Volunteers marched back into Dublin and the subsequent shooting by the soldiers at jeering crowds on Batchelor’s Walk in Dublin seemed to many to signal the beginning of hostilities in Ireland over home rule and Ulster’s separation. Even the
New York Times
came to this conclusion and ran the headline: ‘British troops shed first blood in Ulster war’.
²⁶
Finally, these dramatic events were themselves overshadowed by the outbreak of the Great War on 3 and 4 August 1914. The war, of course, created a whole new set of circumstances.

Quite apart from the matter of Redmond’s control of the Irish Volunteers, which preoccupied the leaders of Clan na Gael in the United States, was the growing discussion about Ulster’s exclusion from home rule for an undefined period of time. These talks, and Redmond’s agreement, caused growing alarm among the supporters of the Irish party in the United States. While many non Irish-Americans saw nothing untoward in this proposition, it was anathema to the Irish-American community. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge wrote to a friend that he had always supported home
rule for Ireland, but he saw nothing wrong with home rule for Ulster, using as an example the determination of Maine to separate from Massachusetts in the early nineteenth century. ‘If you are going to have home rule and local self-government it must be applied fairly to all,’ he concluded.
²⁷
But W. Bourke Cockran, a congressman from New York and a moderate nationalist and long-time supporter of the Irish party, wrote in March of 1914, following a protest meeting at Carnegie Hall, that ‘Irishmen here have been shocked beyond expression to learn that partition of the Island has become not merely a proposal that might be considered, but a proposal that has been actually accepted.’ In a statement that was incredibly prescient Cockran concluded that if ‘a revolt [against Redmond] were started in Ireland, I think the Irish in America would support it to a man’.
²⁸

The signing of the home rule bill into law by the king on 18 September, with the provision that implementation be suspended until the end of the war, met with a mixed response in the United States. Many now accepted home rule as an accomplished fact, but not all. Redmond’s public statement just two days later, at Woodenbridge, Co. Wicklow, urging the Volunteers to join the British army, together with his speech in support of Britain in the war on 3 August, had the powerful effect of alienating large numbers of the Irish in America who had not aligned themselves with the Clan. In Ireland his appeal led to the separation of the original Irish Volunteers from Redmond’s National Volunteers. In the United States, the leading home rule newspaper, the
Irish World
, came out in opposition to him, and Michael J. Ryan, president of the United Irish League of America (who had a German-American wife) was also opposed.
²⁹
With
the national leadership divided, the activities of the UIL were virtually suspended, and even the maintenance of a national office was in doubt. Redmond sent Alderman Daniel Boyle MP on a tour of the United States in 1915, but without much success. Early in the following year Boyle made another trip to raise money for a new publication, a monthly called
Ireland
, to be edited by J.C. Walsh and Shane Leslie. But even with lead articles by distinguished figures such as Cardinal Gibbons of Baltimore, the publication failed to find a readership or rally much support.
³⁰
The passage and suspension of home rule for a divided Ireland, the urging of enlistment in British forces, the split in the Volunteer movement, and the reality of a major war between Britain and Germany placed in doubt the continued loyalty of many Irish-Americans to Redmond.

The outbreak of the Great War profoundly changed the direction of events for the Clan leadership in the United States and for Sir
Roger Casement as well. When war was declared, Casement told Joseph McGarrity: ‘Perhaps Ireland’s chance has come.’
³¹
Irish-Americans had worked together with German-Americans in years past to obstruct efforts to improve Anglo-American relations, so it was to be expected that as soon as war broke out they would again show solidarity. In large public meetings in New York, Newark, Atlantic City, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Chicago and St Louis, Britain’s role in the war was condemned and John Redmond criticised for encouraging Irish involvement. As early as 9 August as many as 10,000 Irish-Americans gathered at Celtic Park in New York to denounce Redmond and home rule and to cheer the Kaiser. Prominent Irish leaders, such as John Devoy, Jeremiah A. O’Leary, and Shaemus O’Sheel, were conspicuous at these events and at German-American rallies as well.
³²

Devoy also arranged for a meeting between Casement and Georg von Skal, a journalist who worked as a propagandist for the German embassy. The same day the German military attaché, Franz von Papen, reported to the Foreign Office on the Celtic Park rally, saying that he had met Casement, from whom he learned that the Irish were ‘ready to free themselves’ if supported by Germany and supplied with arms for 50,000.
³³
Casement drafted a long letter for the Irish-American community to the Kaiser on 25 August in which he outlined Irish-American support for Germany in the war, pointed out that while Britain held Ireland, Britain was able to maintain mastery of the seas, and petitioned that when Germany won the war the Kaiser would ‘impose a lasting peace upon the seas by effecting the independence of Ireland and securing its recognition’. This was signed by the Clan executive, Devoy’s name first, and sent to Germany through the embassy. There appear to have been several meetings with Ambassador Count Johann Heinrich von Bernsdorff, Captain von Papen, assistant attaché Wolf von Igel, von Skal, and other members of the embassy. On the basis of these contacts von Bernsdorff advised the Foreign Office on 27 September that if the war were expected to be a prolonged one, he recommended Germany’s ‘falling in with Irish wishes, provided that there are really Irishmen who are prepared to help’.
³⁴
On 10 October Devoy, McGarrity, Judge Cohalan and Casement met with Ambassador von Bernsdorff, Captain von Papen, and Dr Bernhard Dernburg for an hour and a half at the German Club in New York. The ambassador was told that the war presented an opportunity for Ireland ‘to overthrow English rule in Ireland and set up an independent government’, that both weapons and officers were needed, but not money. Von Bernsdorff reported to the
Foreign Office that it was being urged upon him that the German government make a statement in favour of Irish independence and that Casement be permitted to travel to Germany.
³⁵

Casement’s original trip to the United States did not encompass any mission in Germany. The precise origins are unclear. Joseph McGarrity sent Tom Clarke an undated letter, probably in August 1914, in which, in guarded language, he wrote: ‘A friend whom you trust will be soon on his way to Germany,’ which would seem to refer to Casement. William Irwin Thompson has argued that the German philologist, Kuno Meyer, in the United States in the autumn of 1914, suggested that an Irish brigade be formed by Irish prisoners of war from the British army, and Ambassador von Bernsdorff mentioned such a possibility in a dispatch to his Foreign Office on 27 September.
³⁶
In any case, Casement was talking about a mission to Germany in letters to McGarrity on 23 September and the commitment was made at a meeting with Devoy, McGarrity, and Judge Cohalan on 5 October. The Clan, which had already been looking after Casement’s expenses in the United States, provided $3,000 to get him started. Von Bernsdorff provided a letter of introduction to the imperial Chancellor, Theobald von Bethman Hollweg, and the Austrian consulate in New York booked the tickets to Norway on the
Oscar II
. Casement shaved his beard to become less recognisable and travelled with the passport of an Irish-American businessman, James E. Landy. Devoy and Judge Cohalan had some doubts about Casement’s ability to carry out this enterprise, but McGarrity said: ‘I will trust him with my life.’
³⁷
Casement sailed on 15 October and arrived in Germany on the 31st. British attempts to intercept him in Christiania (Oslo), Norway, failed, and he was escorted from Norway to Germany by Richard Meyer of the German Foreign Office. Once in Germany, Casement had several objectives: to obtain a statement of German commitment to Irish independence; to enlist German support for an insurrection in Ireland; to publicise the Irish cause in Germany; and to create an Irish brigade from among the Irish prisoners of war. He was successful in obtaining a statement supporting Irish independence; had mixed results, at least to his own satisfaction, in enlisting support for and publicising the Irish cause; and was very discouraged with his attempts to organise an Irish brigade.
³⁸