Letter from Roger Casement, Berlin to Captain Hans Boehm, expressing concern about the formation of the Irish Brigade.

Berlin, 8 April 1915 Private

Dear Captain Boehm, With reference to our talk yesterday afternoon the position to my mind is this.

I am not disposed to go on with the idea of the Irish Brigade unless more serious efforts at cooperation are displayed by those who would derive the chief benefit -- both moral and material -- from the step I should be responsible for.

Once the Brigade is formed, even if numerically only a handful of men, and the Agreement on which it rests published, it is Germany and the German Cause and not Ireland or the Irish Cause will derive practically all the benefit.

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Indeed for Ireland it may well involve only further loss and more active measures of repression against Irish nationality, with Germany impotent to keep Ireland, or as was said to me yesterday "quite indifferent to the Irish Cause."

It is the accumulating evidence before me of that "indifference to the Irish Cause" that gives me pause.

We Irish Nationalists are doing all we can, in the Exceedingly difficult position we occupy, to aid our chosen friend, Germany. In America we are arrayed openly on the side of Germany, and whatever good to your country may eventually come from that attitude of ours, you owe it to one thing alone -- the faith of Irish Nationalists that Germany would sincerely champion the cause of our country if success favoured her arms.

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Whatever Executive action in the direction of true American neutrality may yet come from Washington, will be due to the Irish in America more perhaps than to any other influence.

Without them and their political organization, America might well be, today, openly assailing Germany in the ranks of the Allies.

We may not yet have secured the prohibition of War materials to the Allied armies. We have, at any rate, kept the United States out of the ring of active assailants of Germany.

We have done more. We have practically killed recruiting, I believe, in Ireland.

Instead of the 200.000, or even 300.000 men, England relied on from Ireland, as the advance payment for the Home Rule Bill, There have been only some 50.000 voluntary recruits from all Ireland, up

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to the middle of March; and of these 35.000 came from the Ulster "garrison."

So that I and my friends and the policy I stand for have saved Germany from possibly 150.000 more armed foes in Europe, and have secured her the whole hearted support in the New World of the best organized section of American political life.

These are valuable material aids -- surely not to be despised.

If we have not done more it is through no lack of goodwill, but solely due to the fact that with the seas held by our enemy -- and yours -- we are without arms or equipment in Ireland, and debarred in America from sending them there.

Contrast the attitude of Ireland and consider her situation, held in the grip of England, with that of any other community not an open ally of Germany, and I think you will

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admit that we Irish Nationalists have brought you very potent aid.

What have we got in return? A Declaration last November, made personally to me, of academic goodwill for Ireland that cost Germany nothing to say and committed her to nothing.

Since that no effort has been made in any direction to translate that public utterance of an extremely general character into any specific action.

I am aware that the military (and naval) situation of Germany has not permitted active steps to follow in the direction all Irish Nationalists desire -- viz to arm the Volunteers of Ireland as a first step.

But, at least something might have been discussed and plans prepared and evidence of interest in the Irish cause displayed. None has