fight
with Redmond," said Gilbert Galbraith, "Carson had displayed the
qualities of a successful leader with strength of character and boldness
of resource, and Redmond those of a weak, temporizing Stuart, and no man
since Parnell had so browbeaten, insulted, and lashed with scorn the
British people."

What the Sinn Feiners admired in Carson was his scrupulous honesty in
declaring what he wanted, and his gloriously unscrupulous determination
to see that he got it, and they called aloud that Nationalist Ireland
should find someone with the Ulster spirit to lead them.

As a matter of fact it was curiously like what actually occurred, for
they found those leaders in two other Ulster men, Connolly and Casement,
for Germany was merely their common tool--again a leaf out of the
Carsonite book.

Whence then came this link with Germany?

It is modern, very modern indeed--in fact, contemporary, certainly
accidental. Sir Roger Casement had been abroad in the tropics most of
his life: he hated politics; he cannot speak German, and has had to have
all his negotiations done through translators and interpreters.

His sympathy with Germany was based upon the conviction that until the
freedom of the seas had been established by England's naval downfall
Ireland was bound to remain in intellectual, moral, and political
vassalage; but that once Germany had broken the spell, Ireland could
then come freely forward among the nations of the earth, free and
unfettered to fulfill her destiny. He did not, as far as I can gather,
want England's downfall in itself, only Ireland's freedom: and on that
freedom he wished to establish the future peace of the world, bringing
Saxon and Teuton together as they are to-day together in the United
States through the medium of the Celt; for the Irishman can speak with
far more truth of his "German cousins" than the Englishman, at least in
America; and America was to count in Sir Roger Casement's dream of
world-politics. If the Clan-na-Gael did indeed forward German gold to
Ireland, it was with this aim, just as it was with this aim, it was
said, that the Irish in America had steadily opposed the break with
Germany.

Now, it was never expected that Ireland would free herself in the coming
struggle, but there is a story current that he was supposed to have
obtained some guarantees--of what kind I could not find out--that in the
event of Germany winning Ireland would be mentioned at the peace
conference