Art. 13.-SINN FEIN AND GERMANY.

IN the Quarterly Review' for last January we traced the origin of the Sinn Fein movement and described its home and foreign policy down to 1916. We showed that, from 1903, Arthur Griffith and the group associated with him had insisted that Irish independence was to be achieved by making British Government in Ireland impossible, just as Hungarian independence had been won by making Austrian Government in Hungary impossible. We showed that, three years before the War, Roger Casement had formulated a foreign policy for Sinn Fein based upon the imminence of a struggle between Germany and England; that this policy had been endorsed by Bernhardi and was widely discussed in Germany in 1912; and that Casement and the Irish revolutionaries, through the German and Irish-American subsidised propaganda, had long before the War been urging the Irish to prepare to ally themselves with Germany in the anticipation that Germany would be victorious in the great struggle; that, at the Peace Congress, the European Powers, actuated by jealousy of England and controlled by Germany, would guarantee the independence of Ireland as a neutralised State; and that England would thus be deprived of the key of the world's sea power and have the Freedom of the Seas wrenched from her.

The Germanising policy thus advocated was, when the War broke out, and now is, the declared policy of Sinn Fein at home and abroad. This policy, pregnant in its inception with peril to Great Britain and the British Empire, drew, during its years of parturition, nourishment from the virus of English party; it was nursed to maturity by the half-informed doctrinaires and insouciant politicians called in to handle and prescribe for Ireland; and during the War it has developed into a danger to the liberties of the world.

In basing the policy of Sinn Fein upon a victory of Germany in the anticipated war with England, the Sinn Fein Executive, with Casement and Prof. Kuno Meyer, did not leave out of sight the danger that their calculations might be upset by an alliance between the United States and the United Kingdom, and that a contest for

supremacy between England and Germany might resolve itself finally into a racial combat between the AngloSaxon and Teutonic Powers. It thus became the settled determination of the Irish revolutionary leaders, in combination with the German elements in the United States, to provoke jealousies between England and America, and to embroil, so far as possible, the relations between Washington and London.

Prof. Kuno Meyer was actively associated with Casement in publishing articles and brochures with this object. In 1911 Casement wrote:

'The American Alliance may come off. The entente with France, already of great value, can be developed into something more assuredly anti-German; and, if the present-day relation of friendship with the United States can be but tightened into a mutual committal of both Powers to a common foreign policy, then the raid on Germany may never be needed. . . .'

'A bitter resentment with fear at the bottom, a hurried clanging of bolt and rivet in the belt of new warships, and a muffled but diligent hammering at the rivets of an everbuilding American Alliance-the real Dreadnought this, whose keel was laid sixteen years ago, and whose secret construction has cost the silent swallowing of many a cherished British boast. . . . That mightier Dreadnought yet to be the Anglo-Saxon Alliance Germany must fight, if she is to get free.'

In 1914 Casement went to America, and was there when the war broke out. What he and his Sinn Fein associates were doing can be judged from this despatch sent in January 1916 from Berlin, and afterwards published by the American Secretary of State:

"Telegram from the German Foreign Office to Count von Bernstorff:

January 26, for Military Attaché. You can obtain particulars as to persons suitable for carrying on sabotage in the United States and Canada from the following persons:

'(1) Joseph M'Garrity, Philadelphia, Pa.; (2) John P. Kealing, Michigan Avenue, Chicago; (3) Jeremiah O'Leary, 16 Park Row, New York. One and two are absolutely reliable but not always discreet. These persons are indicated by Sir Roger Casement. In the United States sabotage can be carried out on every kind of factory for supplying munitions of war. Railway embankments and bridges must not

be touched. Embassy must in no circumstances be compromised. Similar precautions must be taken in regard to Irish pro-German propaganda.

'Signed Representative of General Staff."

Reuter's news agency on June 9, 1918, reported that

'Jeremiah O'Leary, John Ryan, a Buffalo attorney, Lieutenant-Commander Wessels, of the German Navy, and Baroness Maria von Kretschmann, a kinswoman of the German Empress, and three others have been indicted before the Federal Grand Jury on the charge of conspiring to commit treason, the penalty for which is death.

"The indictments against Jeremiah O'Leary charge him with the collecting and transmission of information regarding the conduct of the war, the destruction of piers, docks, and troop transports with bombs, the destruction of quicksilver mines, with hampering the manufacture of munitions, assisting Germany in landing an armed expedition in Ireland, the fomentation of a revolt in Ireland, raising funds in America to finance these operations, and the destruction of munition factories and mines in Great Britain. The indictments also allege his participation in a conspiracy to commit treason and in a conspiracy to commit espionage.

'The seven individuals who have been indicted with O'Leary are charged with complicity in both conspiracies.'

The statement made by the Government on May 24 gives an outline of the connexion between the Sinn Fein leaders and the Germans, as disclosed by the documents in its possession. The revolutionary movement (it states) consisted of two closely related series of activities: (a) The attempts of the German Government to create rebellion in Ireland; (b) The preparations made in Ireland to carry their attempts into action.

The story falls into two parts-the period prior to, and the period since, the Irish Rebellion of Easter 1916. The events of the first period are told with some detail; but those of the second period, which covers recent events, can only be given in a summary form, as a full statement of the facts and documents in possession of the Government would disclose the names of persons who stood by the Government and also the channels of communication through which the German Government was acting, and which it would not be in the public

interest to reveal at present. The necessarily abbreviated narrative of the Government can, however, be supplemented by references to matters already made public.

Casement's statement of his dealings with Germany is worth giving in his own words. He wrote a letter to the Evening Mail' (New York), on Aug. 10, 1916, which was republished as a leaflet under the title Why Casement went to Germany,' and is now widely circulated as part of the German propaganda. It can be procured in any petty newspaper shop in Ireland. He wrote:

'I have read so many explanations by others why I went to Germany that a word from myself may not be inappropriate. . . . In June 1913 I resigned from the British Consular Service. . . . In November of that year came the establishment of the Irish Volunteers at Dublin. The Irish Volunteers sought to do for all Ireland what the Ulster Volunteers sought for Ulster Protestantism alone-to defend the rights and liberties common to a whole people, Protestant and Catholic. I joined Professor MacNeill and became a member of the governing body of the Volunteers, and with him. addressed the first meetings held after the inaugural Dublin meeting in Galway and Cork in December 1913. . . .'

'After making arrangements with a small band of Irish friends whom I had gathered together in London on May 8, 1914, to get a first consignment of arms purchased on the Continent and landed in Ireland, I went to America to complete the work of obtaining the financial support of Irish Nationalists there, to get arms, just as the Ulster movement had obtained its armed support from the anti-Irish elements of England. . . .'

'I sought to meet the dishonest attempt to betray my countrymen into the ranks of an army of aggression, massed for a dishonest attack upon a people with whom Irishmen had no just cause of quarrel, by two letters addressed through the Irish press to Irishmen, in which I begged Irishmen to stay at home and leave England to fight her own wars of aggression. The first of these letters reached its destination and was published in the Irish Independent,' Oct. 5, 1914. The later letter failed to reach the Irish press owing to the British Censorship. . . .'

I hoped that the German Government might be induced to make clear its peaceful intention towards Ireland, and that the effect of such a pronouncement in Ireland itself might be powerful enough to keep Irishmen from volunteering for a

war that had no claim upon their patriotism or their honour. With this aim chiefly in view I came to Germany in November 1914, and I succeeded in my purpose. The German Government declared openly its good will towards Ireland and in convincing terms.'

The letter as it appeared in the Independent' was published at much greater length in 'Sinn Fein' (Griffith's paper), and was caught up by the other seditious prints and reiterated. It had a quick effect in stopping recruiting.

When Casement arrived in Germany he got into immediate touch with the German Government and kept up regular communication with the Sinn Fein leaders in America, such as Judge Cohalan, Jeremiah O'Leary, and John Devoy, through the German Foreign Office and the German Embassy in America. Several despatches have been published by the American Government which throw light upon the German machinations. The Clanna-Gael, which was in touch with the Fenian Republican Brotherhood, the Irish Volunteers, and the Sinn Fein Executive, was in alliance with the German organisations in America; and active arrangements for a rebellion in Ireland were undertaken. One of the German agents, Lody, was arrested in Killarney, brought to London, tried, and shot in the Tower.

Judge Cohalan was an Irish-American who had been a member of the law committee of Tammany Hall and had been appointed a Supreme Court Justice by Governor Dix in 1911. At the meeting of the Irish Race Convention in March 1916, when a speech by Supreme Court Judge John W. Goff aroused cries of Down with England,' Judge Cohalan was announced as one of the Board of Directors of the Friends of Irish Freedom. His name appeared as one of the conveners of the meeting with that of Jeremiah O'Leary and T. St John Gaffney, an Irishman from Limerick, who had been recalled as American Consul from Munich by the United States Government.* We shall find the Friends of Irish freedom and St John Gaffney actually plotting in Germany and neutral countries against England in the present year and representing Sinn Fein at the Stockholm Conference. On Nov. 6, 1914, immediately after Casement's arrival,

* See the New York World,' Sept. 23, 1917.