to serve his own ideals for the future of Ireland and thus
can be termed a leader.

Sir Roger Casement is an Ulsterman of the old type that was the backbone
of the Rebellion of '98, when the Presbyterians of the North tried to
emulate those English and Irish exiles who, persecuted out of their
native shores by High Church tyranny, had laid the foundations of
American liberty under Washington.

That he is a man of character, and not the "bounder and scoundrel" the
Press now makes him out to be, goes without saying, or otherwise he
would not have received the honour of a title at the hands of a grateful
country: in fact, until his entrance into the troubled waters of Irish
politics he was one of the most universally respected of our civil
servants.

For ten years, from 1895 to 1905, for example, he was in the wilds of
Africa, for the greater portion of his sojourn as Consul in Portuguese
West Africa and then later in the Congo Free State.

After this he was sent to South America, and in 1909 he was appointed
Consul-General at Rio de Janeiro. So trusted was he that when the
British Government wished to investigate the labour atrocities on the
Indians in the rubber forests of Peru, they chose Sir Roger Casement;
and when his report was printed in 1912 it caused the profoundest stir,
not merely in England, but throughout the civilized world.

This was surely a man of character and above the ordinary temptations of
bribery, or else he would not in 1905 have received the C.M.G. and in
1911 knighthood--moreover, he was a man who may be said to have had
ample opportunity of getting outside the narrow groove of Irish politics
and seeing something of the Empire.

Yet while Irish politics had been moving with tremendous rapidity during
his absence--the fateful years between 1895-1905--Sir Roger Casement
seems never to have got beyond the Ulster of 1798--which I need hardly
remind anyone conversant with history was as rebellious to England as
was Wexford under Cromwell.

This _idee fixe_ began to appear at once upon his return to Ireland in
the year 1913, when he found politics in a chaos of ferment, and seeing
Sir Edward Carson preparing to appeal to arms and his supporters to
Germany, he too "began to indulge in treason in the same spirit as
Carson and the Curragh crew," as he himself described his attitude of
that time.

Possibly Germany was equally willing to sell her old rifles to both
parties, but the war precipitate