The Mystery of a Diary
BY ADMIRAL SIR W. M. JAMES IN Last Changes, Last Chances H. W. Nevinson wrote : `Yet I still believe Casement's life would have been saved by the appeals but for the action of the Government in diverting sympathy by raising a personal issue that had nothing whatever to do with the case.' The personal issue concerned Casement's private life. Prominent people were shown extracts of his diary- in which he had recorded the experiences of a homosexual. It was described by Sir Basil Thomson, Head of the CID, as unprintable in any age or any language. Many people believed at the time, and many still believe, that Sir Roger Casement would not have gone to the gallows if the campaign which was organised to obtain a reprieve had not abruptly ended when the extracts were shown to his sym- pathisers; but, though the Cabinet was divided on the issue of carrying out the sentence, it is doubtful if his chances of reprieve were as good as his friends believed. It is no longer seriously contended that the Cabinet was responsible for the circulation of the diary, though Casement's more extreme sympathisers have always turned a blind eye to the irrefutable evidence to the contrary. Nor is it in dispute that John Redmond and other prominent men ceased their efforts on Casement's behalf after reading the diary. But the authenticity of the diary is still in dispute, and the recent pub- lication of a biography of Admiral Sir Reginald Hall has blown on the embers of a controversy that once raged fiercely.
There has always been a body of opinion, mainly Irish, that the diary was a forgery and that it was kept in readiness to produce at the right moment to load the dice against Case- ment. Those who believe it was a forgery find support in Dr. Maloney's The Forged Casement Diaries, but this pub- lication has been variously stigmatised as a cheap piece of propaganda, full of inaccuracies and irrelevancies, and only by courtesy called a book at all.
There is another body of opinion that the diary belonged to r■ a scoundrel whom Casement met when investigating the Putumayo atrocities, and that it was taken from the Putumayo papers in the Foreign Office to discredit Casement, if he was captured. The strange feature of this revived controversy is that the disputants either ignore or are unaware of the War Diary of Sir Basil Th'omson which was published in 1939. Casement's biographers—Denis Gwynn in The Life and Death of Roger Casement and G. de C. Parminter in Roger Case- ment—published their works some years before Thomson's diaries were published, and how, when and where the diary was discovered was still a mystery.
But since 1939 there has been'no mystery. No one has ever suggested that Thomson's diary is not an accurate chronicle of events that came within his province. He records that on July 13, 1916, when he and Hall were interviewing Casement. Superintendent Quinn entered the room and asked for the keys of Casement's trunks, then lying in the Special Branch. Case- ment handed over his keys, and the Superintendent returned later and handed Thomson an MS. volume which had been found in one of the trunks. A few days later Casement's solici- tor demanded the surrender of the contents of the trunks. Everything except the book was sent him, and there came a second letter pointing out that the police were retaining some property. This disposes of the charge that the diary was 'planted' in Casement's luggage.
As some American papers were championing Casement, Thomson had some pages of the diary photographed and showed them to Dr. Page, the American Ambassador. Thom- son does not say that he showed the photographs to anyone else, but recorded at a later date that he found a typewritten copy of the complete diary amongst his papers and destroyed it. But the photographs and possibly typewritten copies did reach a considerable number of people.
Those who, despite this evidence, still believe that the diary was a forgery must also believe that Thomson and Hall en- , gaged someone to write a diary of a homosexual which would be so accurate in detail (e.g., handwriting, dates, geographical data) that it would pass the close scrutiny of a reader who was well acquainted with Casement's life and activities in Afric,a and South America; that they went to all this trouble on the off-chance of Casement being captured; and that they took the appalling risk of employing as co-conspirators Scot- land Yard officers who, if they did not maintain complete silence about their part in the plot, could wreck their careers. Those who, despite this evidence, still believe that the diary was extracted from the Putumayo file in the Foreign Office must also believe that either Thomson, who only went to Scot- land Yard in 1913, by some necromancy knew of the existence of the diary, or that some Foreign Office official, on hearing of Casement's arrest, extracted the diary from the file and gave it to Thomson to use as he wished. The more closely the claims that the diary was a forgery or the Putumayo diary are examined, the more preposterous they appear. Hall and Thom- son would go to great lengths to stop the activities of a spy or traitor, but they were far too astute to devise a plot which, if exposed, would cause their downfall.
Some hard things have been said of Hall for his part in disclosing the contents of the diary.' In retrospect it seems un- worthy of him, but the war was at a critical stage, the threat to our sea communications and to our ability to continue the fight was increasing as more and more German submarines were being thrown into the Atlantic battle, and neither Hall nor the majority of his countrymen was in the mood to' deal lightly with traitors.
Hall knew that Casement had not only plotted with the Ger- mans to stab us in the back by an armed rising in Ireland, but had also assisted German-paid saboteurs in the United States without any thought of the innocent lives that might be lost. Through his intercepting and deciphering service, Hall had followed the activities of the saboteurs. One of the most important of these intercepts was a telegram from the German General Staff to von Papen, the Military Attaché at Washing- ton. It read as follows : You can obtain particulars as to persons suitable for carry- ing out sabotage in the US and Canada from the following persons: 1, Joseph MacGarrity, Philadelphia, Pa. 2, John P. Keating, Michigan Avenue„ Chicago. 3, Jeremiah O'Leary, Park Row, New York 16. 1 and 2 are absolutely reliable and discreet. No. 3 is reliable but not always discreet. These persons were indicated by Sir Roger Casement. . . .
Fourteen years later this telegram was one of the exhibits in the famous 'Black Tom' case which was argued before the Permanent Court of International Justice at The Hague. (Black Tom was the name of the freight terminal in New York which was destroyed on January 11, 1917, by a giant explosion, caused by saboteurs, which blew to atoms the railway station, the warehouses, a number of barges and ships, and a great quantity of high explosives.) It may be beating against the air to try to convince Case- ment's Irish sympathisers that the 'affair of the diary' was not a plot engineered by the hated British Government, but all who were privileged to serve under Hall, or to enjoy his friend- ship, are anxious that 'the affair' should be seen in its proper perspective.
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