Two more letters of Casement interest have come to light. They were sent by a Cork priest following an article (January 3rd) based on a file released by the National Archives. Fr William Shinkwin explained that he had them in his possession since 1959, when he was executor of a friend's will.
They were typed on the stationery of George Gavan Duffy, Casement's solicitor and executor (and a signatory of the Treaty five years later). The original of the first letter, written by Casement in Pentonville Prison on July 16th, 1916, is in the National Library of Ireland.
One would expect the manuscript of the second letter to be with the Duffy papers but a search has failed to find it. A Dublin-born priest, Edward Murnane, wrote it after visiting Casement on the eve of his execution, August 2nd. On returning to his presbytery he found a telegram from Duffy which read: "Pray for him." All hope of securing a reprieve had been abandoned. Fr Murnane (1853-1933) served in Holy Trinity, Dockhead; the foundation deed of this London church stipulated that one of its priests should be Irish-speaking.
Casement letter
Casement's letter to Fr Murnane shows him still wrestling with the idea of dying a Catholic. He told his "dear old friend": "The trouble is am I convinced or do I only think I am? Am I moved by love or fear? I can only accept in my soul from love - never from fear; and part of the appeal seems at times to be my fear. The more I read the more confused I get - and it is not reading I want but companionship. I am sure you understand. And I don't want to jump or rush or do anything hastily just because time is short. "It must be my deliberate act, unwavering and confirmed by all my intelligence. And alas, today it is not so. It is still I find only my heart that prompts from love, from affection for others, from association of ideas and ideals, and not yet my full intellect. For if it were thus the doubts would not beset me so vigorously as they do. I am not on a rock - but on a bed of thorns."
Recalling his humanitarian work, Casement said he was glad to hear news of the Franciscan missionaries in Putumayo. "The Franciscans were loved in Peru from of old, and it is a good thing to think of them there now in that dreary region - and I am glad for their sake. Once I grieved at it and thought I was sending or asking them to be sent out to bitter trial and disappointment. But it is not so - and they will see the fruit of their privations and of their self-sacrifice in the lives they save, and in the increase of life and happiness around them to replace the old dread and fear and mortal misery."
Casement had gone to Germany at the outbreak of the first World War to seek assistance for the Irish freedom struggle. He believed that without substantial military help an uprising was doomed to failure; he considered the German aid which materialised utterly inadequate and returned to Ireland with the intention of preventing hostilities. The Germans sent 20,000 captured Russian rifles in the hope of sparking a diversion on England's flank. Casement followed the arms shipment by submarine but was arrested on landing in Co Kerry on Good Friday 1916.
Ironically, his capture and the scuttling of the Aud placed the British authorities off guard. Two months after the Rising, at the High court in London, he was convicted of high treason and sentenced to death.
Journey of a soul
Murnane's letter - now in the National Library - charts the journey of a noble soul. The priest wrote that his last interview with Casement would ever remain in his mind and heart. "He faced death like a gallant Irish gentleman with the added courage and confidence of a good Catholic. He talked freely of his death and was looking forward to his confession tonight and his first holy communion tomorrow morning.
"He sent grateful messages to all who prayed for him and loved him - that I was to tell all he died for Ireland, and that he wished them to know he had no bitterness in his heart for anyone, and that he felt he was being put to death not for the principles he held but because he was Roger Casement (I think I lost a few words here)."
As a British humanitarian turned Irish rebel, Casement was a particularly hated figure. While expert opinion in Britain pronounced him "abnormal but not certifiably insane", Catholic Ireland embraced him as a martyr.
Murnane continued: "He was wonderful - the peace, the tranquillity, the courage with which he faced death and talked of it. It was like the last hours of some glorious martyr . . . He bowed his head and made the sign of the cross as I blessed him and bade him goodbye until we meet again in heaven. He hears Mass and makes his first and last Communion at 7 o'c [a.m., August 3rd, 1916] . . . My heart is divided between joy and sorrow."
`Gone to heaven'
The prison chaplain, Fr Thomas Carey, recorded that Casement "marched to the scaffold with the dignity of a prince . . . He feared not death and he prayed with me to the last. I have no doubt that he has gone to heaven."
Duffy assured the Belfast antiquarian, Francis Joseph Bigger, that Casement had not died in vain. He widened the gulf, already opening up, between British imperial and Irish nationalist opinion. Perceived as an arch-traitor by a Britain at war with the Central Powers, to the Irish he was the 16th leader to be executed in 1916.
Although he had opposed the Rising, in his last message to Ireland Casement closed ranks: "What was attempted so valiantly this year by a handful of young men is the only episode of this war that should survive in history. The rest is either mistaken slaughter of brave men, or plotting to destroy an enemy by hate for motives of greed and dominion. I cast no stone at the millions of brave dead throughout Europe - God rest their souls in peace - but the cause . . . of all the great combatants is essentially greedy and selfish. Ireland alone went forth to assail evil."