Shady Secrets ?
BY ROBERT BLAKE THI3 civil servants who govern the Home Office have managed to render their department by far thas most notorious in the country for general asininity and obscurantism. Not content with making a fool of Lord Mancroft over Mr. Koestler's alleged misquotation of a Home Office instruction on hanging, they have contrived to make an even greater fool of poor Mr. Deedes, who had to reply on May 3 in the House of Commons to Mr. Montgomery Hyde's motion about Case- ment's diaries. Seldom has an official answer been more feeble, misleading and disingenuous. The facts are so curious that they deserve some analysis.
On June 29, 1916, Sir Roger Casement was correctly found guilty of high treason and inevitably condemned to death. During the weeks before his execution an original manuscript, together with photographic and typed copies, of a diary said to have been written by Casement was circulated to influential persons who favoured a reprieve. Many of those who saw it were deeply shocked at what they deemed to be the depravity that it revealed. As a result the movement for reprieve received a setback—although the setback has sometimes been exagger- ated. It is, for example, untrue that the Archbishop of Canter- bury refused to sign a petition for reprieve on the ground of Casement's immorality. On the contrary, he refused for a reason which his successors might with advantage imitate : that it was wrong for him publicly to bring pressure upon the Cabinet over what was in part a political question. Privately he strongly pressed for a reprieve, and in doing so wrote to the Lord Chancellor : I have purposely not dwelt upon all the complexities of immoral morbidities about which I have so much unpleasing experience every month of my life.
For a long while it was not known who was responsible for the circulation of the diaries, but Admiral Sir William James in his recent life of Admiral Hall, then Director of Naval Intelligence, makes it clear that Hall, acting in collaboration with the Assistant Commissioner at Scotland Yard, Sir Basil Thomson, took the decision. Thus far the facts are not in dispute.
For many years past, however, the pro-Casement party have argued that the diary was not in fact written by Casement at all. The allegation is that. Hall and Thomson not only circu- lated charges wholly irrelevant to the question of treason but actually fudged the evidence upon which those charges were based. So fantastic a theory would command very little support—except from fanatical anglophobes—but for the extraordinary conduct of the Home Office over the past forty years. Clearly the authenticity of the diary could easily be settled by an examination of the original, nor is there any other way of finally silencing partisan doubts. Yet for forty years the Home Office has not only refused all access to the diary. but it has even declined to say whether or not such a document mists
thys imix) was decided is obscure. At the
end of 1921, the time of the Irish Treaty, the late Lord Birkenhead showed the diaries to Michael Collins and Eamon Duggan, who later became a minister in Cosgrave's govern- ment. Duggan in his written account states that Collins at once recognised Casement's writing, and that Birkenhead himself obviously believed in the diaries' authenticity. By 1925, how- ever, the ban was on. In that year Mr. Peter Singleton-Gates who had had continuous access to a typed copy of the diaries since 1922 was forced, by a most improper and outrageous threat of prosecution under the Official Secrets Act, to suppress before publication his completed book, The Secret Diaries of Roger Casement. Since 1925 the ban has been complete. Mr. Rene MacColl, whose recent book, Roger Casement : A New Judgement, has provoked a storm in Ireland, expressly disclaimed any desire to see the diary but merely asked Mr. Lloyd George to confirm its existence. He was informed that the Home Secretary could give him no information.
Such an attitude plays into the hands of those who believe in the forgery theory. There must, it is argued, be some shady secret which the British Government dares not reveal : other- wise what objection could there be to historians examining the diaries? In order to persuade the Home Secretary to change his policy Mr. Montgomery Hyde raised the matter on the adjournment of the House. He was unsuccessful, but in the course of his speech he adduced new evidence which makes the attitude of the Home Office less defensible than ever. He quoted from two memoranda Written for the Cabinet by Sir Ernley Blackwell, Legal Adviser to the Home Office in 1916. He did not disclose how he had seen these important papers. Blackwell heads the first memorandum, dated July 17, 1916. 'Exercise of the Prerogative on grounds of insanity.' He begins :
Casement's diary and his• ledger entries covering many pages of closely typed matter show that he has for years been addicted to the grossest sodomitical practices.
Of late years he seems to have completed the full circle of sexual degeneracy and from a pervert has become an invert—a 'woman' or pathic, who derives his satisfaction from attracting men and inducing them to use him. The point is worth noting for the Attorney General [F. E. Smith] had given Sir E. Grey the impression that Casement's own account of the frequency of his performances was incredible and of itself suggested that he was labouring under hallucina- tions in this respect. I think that this idea may be dismissed. 1 believe the diaries are a faithful and accurate record of his acts, thoughts, and feelings just as they presented them- selves to him. . . .
F. E. Smith and other members of the Cabinet, anxious to reprieve Casement for political reasons, hoped to use insanity as their excuse. Sir Ernley Blackwell, who clearly believed the diaries to be genuine, is arguing the case against reprieve on grounds of insanity, and, having disposed of that, he goes on to say that the case for reprieve on grounds of political expediency is weakened by the fact that the diaries 'by judicious means' might be used after Casement's execution to prevent him attaining martyrdom. He was not, however, in favour of using the diaries before execution in order to discredit the movement for reprieve, nor is there any evidence that the Cabinet authorised such action. It seems clear that Hall and Thomson were solely responsible for this highly questionable manoeuvre.
The publication of these memoranda makes the official refusal to admit the diaries' existence more ludicrous than ever. Mr. Deedes defended his department on two grounds. First, an official disclosure might stir up 'controversy.' The answer to this is that a furious controversy is raging here and now. and that it will never be stilled while present policy prevails. And anyway what is wrong with controversy? It is often the only method of getting at the truth. Secondly Mr. Deedes declared that if the Home Office were to confirm the genuine- ness of the diaries it would be giving information 'detrimental to the character of a man who had been a prisoner,' and this was contrary to its principles. Really, Mr. Deedes! view of Sir Ernley Blackwell's advice to use the diaries after Casement's execution, and in view of all that has happened• a more fatuous argument can hardly be conceived, What then are the real reasons for the Home Office's attitude, for they cannot be quite as silly as Mr. Deedes would have us believe? Despite the official silence, I do not believe for one moment that the diaries are forged. There is far too much evidence against this anyway ' improbable theory. The most plausible explanation is that at some time in the past the British Government has entered into a concordat with the Irish Government to say nothing about the diaries. The absence of protest from the Irish Government tends to confirm this theory. It presupposes, of course, that the diaries are genuine, or at least' that the Irish Government (which is unlikely to have any bias against Casement) believes them to be.
If this theory is correct, then the sooner the concordat is broken the better. Anglo-Irish relations are in the end not a matter of governments but of public opinion, and they are being far more damaged by the present policy than by revealing the truth. Moreover it is unfair that their relatives should be denied a chance to clear the charges of forgery levelled against Hall and Thomson. Casement's is not the only reputa- tion involved,
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