Sir, - Roger Casement was a noble man in every sense of the word. He loved his country passionately; of that there can be no doubt.
Eoin Neeson, however (Opinion, August 22nd), seems to be hovering over the British bird lime by implying that it is necessary to disprove his sexual orientation to prove his greatness. It is not; no more than it is necessary to disown Oscar Wilde's to prove his.
However, de Valera held that Casement was "a far from expert conspirator". He was also naive about people. The old Fenian John Devoy hated his Anglo-Saxon guts and his sexual orientation. He undermined his German mission. Yet innocent Casement wrote to him from Germany saying, "wish you were here with me, John". He also wrote of Christiansen, his Norwegian travelling companion, with whom he had a homosexual relationship: "He is a treasure and I am glad I brought him." Christiansen betrayed him.
Eoin Neeson writes: "En route to Germany, the British Consul in Norway attempted to suborn Casement's servant into murdering or otherwise disposing of his employer". Villainy is the stock in trade of British Intelligence but Mr Neeson's half-truth is counter-productive. Likewise his misplaced attempts disprove Casement's sexual orientation in order to prove his nobility.
No one can take Sir Roger's nobility and honesty away from him - not even his misguided defenders attacking the decoy.
When Dick Spring brought out his monumental White Paper on Foreign Affairs calling for "ownership of policy by the people", in furtherance of that aim I did extensive research in Kew. My purpose was to show, in layman's language, the seedbed events from which our foreign policy germinated. I was fortunate enough to come across original stuff on Christiansen and Casement.
I submitted the first of three chapters to the Royal Irish Academy. They sank without trace. I submitted full text to two other publishers. The layman's language for the target audience of "the people" failed to impress the proprietorial academic readers, wedded to arcane, esoteric gobbledegook. I got flattering letters but no acceptance. The intention is to revise and return. It is too good to lose.
By the way, the Norwegians knew all about Casement and Christiansen but they were hypersensitive about their neutrality and did not want to get involved by passing it on.
British Intelligence criminally misused the diaries to irrelevantly smear Casement. They thwarted a clemency process for "the noble-minded knight errant" who had gained worldwide fame by exposing the exploitation of rubber workers in the Congo and Putamayo.
This is not to deny his homosexuality. He never did. He was an honest man. The crusader for Irish freedom converted to Catholicism before his execution. - Yours, etc.,
John P. Duggan, Cedarmount Road, Mount Merrion, Co Dublin.