Footnotes

'IT IS AGAINST MY GRAIN TO APPEAL TO ENGLAND': NEWLY DISCOVERED LETTERS FROM SIR ROGER CASEMENT WRITING FROM IMPERIAL GERMANY PRIOR TO HIS FINAL JOURNEY TO IRELAND AND SUBSEQUENT EXECUTION.

These hitherto unpublished and unseen letters were written during the latter part of Roger Casement's sojourn in Germany from the years 1914-16. They are accompanied by a letter from the recipient, Max W. Karstensen, special correspondent for the Münchener Zeitung, to David M. M. C. Somerville, to whom he gave the letters in April 1921. Highly influential, Karstensen acted as an intermediary and 'fixer' in political and royal circles in Bavaria and, as these letters show, was a regular correspondent and confidant of Roger Casement, who contributed articles to his newspaper. Amongst other things they prove, Karstensen writes, that Casement was never in the pay of the German government ("...he had in Gy no other income than from his pen and from small sums sent to him in uncertain intervals by the American Irish...") and that he was only in Germany "...to get from the Govt the formal and public assurance that Gy was not the enemy of Ireland. Thereafter he wanted to return to America...". He speaks at length of the malign influence of Thomas St John Gaffney (1864-1945), the Irish-born anti-British US consul general at Munich, frequently mentioned in the letters, whom he believed used Casement for his own ends ("...[they] saw he was faltering and betrayed him. He was hanged before he could have upset their plans...as a marthyr [sic] too. A wicked affair..."). Perhaps for the first time it is revealed here that Karstensen was involved in trying to get Casement out of Germany to the US in the summer of 1915 but, in his opinion, was thwarted by Gaffney ("...A Norwegian bloke Shirmer was found willing to take him across and I was to go to Bergen to arrange things. But then Gaffney and Erzberger persuaded him to stay and work with the catholic party... And so it was with the 'Irish Brigade'. Gaffney managed everything..."). He refers Sommerville to Gaffney's postcard included in the lot ("...Always on the move and the handwriting shows it – on the booze. Reckless and regardless, but himself always safe undercover..."). Casement, according to Karstensen, was a victim of circumstance who did not support the Easter Rising and, indeed, just before he left on his final journey had confided in him that "...he would do everything to dissuade the leaders in Ireland from their plans. But he never got the chance... For C. was not a dark conspirator. He was a child and everything could be got out of him by kindness...". This period is discussed in detail in Reinhard R. Doerries' Prelude to the Easter Rising: Roger Casement in Imperial Germany, London, 2000.

Casement's time in Germany was not a happy one. By the time he wrote these letters he was suffering from poor health and dogged by the British Intelligence service who were 'becoming aware of his homosexual proclivities' (George Boyce, D., ODNB). At first the German government supported the idea of supporting insurrection in Ireland by tying up British there. However, its interest in the Irish nationalist movement waned when it was clear Casement's efforts to create an Irish Brigade in Germany would fail, after the men refused to fight for Germany to expel the British in Egypt. What he did do, however, as shown in these letters, was work hard to improve conditions for the small unit of volunteers. He writes from the Golden Lion in Zossen that he has provided them with new boots out of his own money earned from writing articles for Karstensen's newspaper, and that Mrs Gaffney "and her friends" have also supported the cause by providing the men with a "very pretty Christmas gift" (according to the Irish Brigade website this was a 'green satin bag tied with Irish and German colours, containing tobacco, cigarettes, chocolate... and other things').

The letters also shed light on Casement's close relationship with Thomas St. John Gaffney, whom he urges Karstensen to meet. In our letter of 15 November 1915, Casement describes how "our friend Gaffney" is due to leave for Copenhagen the following day on the Danish-American vessel Oscar II, predicting correctly that the English would search him on board, something which Gaffney recalls in his memoir, Breaking the Silence (New York, 1930, p.133). By March 1916 Gaffney was back in Europe as representative of the Friends of Irish Freedom for Europe and, as he describes, was 'constantly' with Casement, who left the fate of the Irish Brigade in his hands. A month after the last letter in the series, Casement left for Ireland on a German U-Boat with the intention of meeting with a ship carrying arms to facilitate the Easter Rising, even though it seems that his real intention was to send word to Dublin warning them that an insurrection would not succeed. Casement and his two companions were arrested on arrival. From thence he was taken to London, tried and executed for treason.

It is likely that Karstensen met David Somerville, to whom he gave the letters, whilst Somerville was working in Munich in the 1920's. Somerville was born in Norway to an English-speaking father and, helped by his command of Norwegian and Finnish was made temporary Vice-Consul at Bergen in 1916 and was Acting Consul there from September 1919 to June 1920. After his time in Munich, he continued his career in Sweden where he worked for the Passport Office in Stockholm during the Second World War when, according to his family, the Swedish secret police (Säpo) notes he was working for MI6. He was a distant cousin to Vice Admiral Henry Boyle Somerville, who was the first naval officer to be posted to the burgeoning British Secret Intelligence Service in 1917.

Provenance: Max W. Karstensen; given to the owner's grandfather David Maitland Makgill Crichton Somerville (1891-1982); thence by descent.