Page:Roger Casement - The crime against Ireland and how the war may right it.djvu/68

62 some part be true, that there came some munition." It was because O'Neill was a statesman and knew the imperative need to Ireland of keeping in touch with Europe that for Elizabeth he became "the chief traitor of Ireland"—"a reprobate from God, reserved for the sword."

Spain was to Elizabethan Englishman what Germany is to-day.

"I would venture to say one word here to my Irish fellow countrymen of all political persuasions. If they imagine they can stand politically or economically while Britain falls they are woefully mistaken. The British fleet is their one shield. If it be broken, Ireland will go down. They may well throw themselves heartily into the common defense, for no sword can transfix England without the point reaching Ireland behind her." (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in the Fortnightly Review, February, 1913, "Great Britain and the Next War.")

The voice is a very old one, and the bogey has done duty for a long time in Ireland. When to-day, it is from Germany that freedom may be feared, Ireland is warned against the Germans. When, three hundred years ago the beacon of hope shone on the coast of Spain, it was the Spaniards who were the bad people of history.

Fray Mattheo de Oviedo, who had been sent to Ireland as Archbishop, wrote to King Phillip III from O'Neill's stronghold, Dungannon, on June 24$th$, 1600. We might be listening to the voice of the Fortnightly Review of yesterday. "The English are making great efforts to bring about a peace, offering excellent terms, and for this purpose the Viceroy sent messengers twice to O'Neill, saying, among other things, that Your Majesty is making peace with the Queen, and that his condition will be hopeless. At other times he says that no greater misfortune could happen to the country than to bring Spaniards into it, because they are haughty and vicious and they would