THE HOME OFFICE reply in the adjournment debate on the
Casement diaries was, even by Home Office standards, a classic of misinformed evasiveness. Mr. Montgomery Hyde had asked for an investigation by experts into the diaries' authenticity; Mr. Deedes's reply was that the Home Office could not accept this, on principle, because it 'would be giving from official sources information detrimental to the character of a man who had been a prisoner.' Indeed? A pity the Home Office did not remember this 'important principle' forty years ago when it was busy spreading around copies of the diaries in order to discredit Casement. The contents of the diaries are not in ques- tion. All that has been asked for is an investigation whether or not they are authentic. Nothing more need be disclosed. Mr. Deedes's second reason for refusal was even less convincing. 'The embers of controversy,' he thought, 'might be fanned to a flame' by an investigation. But an investigation would settle the controversy once and for all; whereas the lack of it means that bitterness on the subject will remain. * * *
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