Page:Roger Casement - The crime against Ireland and how the war may right it.djvu/67

Rh Ireland has failed to win her freedom, not so much because she has failed to shed her blood, but because her situation in the world is just that unique situation I have sought to depict. Belonging to Europe, she has not been of Europe; and England with a persistency that would be admirable were it not so criminal in intention and effect, has bent all her efforts, all her vigor, an unswerving policy and a pitiless sword to extend the limits of exclusion. To approach Ireland at all since the first English Sovereign laid hands upon it was "quite immoral." When Frederick of Hohenstaufen (so long ago as that!) sent his secretary (an Irishman) to Ireland, we read that Henry III of England declared "it hurt him terribly," and ordered all the goings out and comings in of the returned Irish-German statesman to be closely watched.

The dire offence of Hugh O'Neill to Elizabeth was far less his rebellion than his "practices" with Spain. At every cessation of arms during the Nine Years War he waged with England, she sought to obtain from him an abjuration of "foreign aid," chiefly " that of the Spaniard." "Nothing will become the traitor (O'Neill) more than his public confession of any Spanish practices, and his abjuration of any manner of hearkening or combining with any foreigners."

Could O'Neill be brought to publicly repudiate help from abroad it would have, the Queen thought, the effect that "in Spain * * * the hopes of such attempts might be extinguished.

As long as the sea was open to Spain there was grave danger. If Spaniard and Irishman came close together O'Neill's offense was indeed "fit to be made vulgar"—all men would see the strength of combination, the weakness of isolation.

"Send me all the news you receive from Spain for Tyrone doth fill all these parts with strange lies, although