THE MYSTERY OF A DIARY SIR,—Two points in. Admiral Sir
W. M. James's reasoned argument for the genuineness of the Casement diaries require comment.
The first is his dismissal of Dr. Maloney's book, The Forged Casement Diaries, which he says has been described as 'full of inaccuracies and irrelevancies, and only by courtesy called a book at all.' It was so described, in those words, by a correspondent to the New States- man on December 10 of last year, but the description is a misleading one, for while the book is certainly unsatisfactory, displaying a strong Irish nationalist bias, its chief fault is that of clumsy presentation of a case, which is at first sight striking, suggesting that the diaries may have been a fake of British wartime propaganda. This case has not been answered scientifically, although Dr. Maloney's book was published nineteen years ago. Indeed even now, I'm afraid, it looks rather as if Admiral Sir W. M. James had not read the book when he wrote his article, for he says that in addition to Dr. Maloney's view 'there is another body of opinion that the diary belonged to a scoun- drel whom Casement met when investigating the Putumayo atrocities' and which he sub- mitted to the Foreign Office. This is in fact Dr. Maloney's argument. His book's silly title is merely an example of its clumsiness.
The second point concerns Admiral James's statement that 'Hall and Thomson . . . were far too astute to devise a Plot which, if ex- posed, would cause their downfall.' When in fact Sir Basil Thomson did fall down, being convicted on January 5, 1926, of an indecent offence committed in Hyde Park the month before, he had admittedly retired from his post as Director of Intelligence, but the police court proceedings revealed that he had made an attempt to bribe the policeman who arrested him. This does not seem to have been a very astute thing to do.
What at least is clear is that it is high time that the genuineness or otherwise of the Case- ment diaries was settled once and for all. Any- one interested in historical truth must be grate- ful to you for opening your columns to the subject.—Yours faithfully, ROBERT KEE
Savile Club, 69 Brook Street, London, WI
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