THE CASEMENT DIARIES
S1R,—May I add a postscript to Mr. Brian Inglis's interesting article on the Casement Diaries? Sir John Harris, Secretary of the Aborigines Protection Society, who had been in Africa with Casement, demolished the charge that the diary was a forgery. He believed it was a forgery until he was shown the diary. He then found, to his astonishment, that all the people and places mentioned were accurate.
Someone with a very lively imagination must have concocted the story that the British Authorities had the diary prepared on the remote chance that Case- ment would fall into their hands. They would have had to engage a blackguard to go to Africa to follow Casement's footsteps before Casement began his treasonable activities, and lay themselves open to exposure and blackmail. If Sir Basil Thomson's account of the finding of the diary was untrue, he laid himself open to exposure, disgrace and blackmail because he mentions two police officers who found the diary in Casement's luggage and brought it to the room where he and Admiral Hall were interviewing Casement. Those who remember Thomson knew that he was far too astute a man to do anything so stupid and reckless.
As I soon discovered when writing a biography of Admiral Hall, the passions aroused by the trial and hanging of Casement generated a crop of stories, which could not survive even a cursory examination. —Yours faithfully,
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