Page:Roger Casement - The crime against Ireland and how the war may right it.djvu/74

68 the highest grounds of policy the help so often promised by the King of Spain. They showed him not only by their valor on the field but by their sagacious council how great a part was reserved for Ireland in the affairs of Europe if he would but profit from it and do his part.

In this the Spanish King failed. Phillip II had died in 1598, too immersed in religious trials to see that the centre of his griefs was pivoted on the possession of Ireland by the female Nero. With his son and successor communication was maintained and in a letter of Phillip III to O'Neill, dated from Madrid. December 24$th$, 1599, we read: "Noble and well-beloved, I have already written a joint letter to you and your relative O'Donnell, in which I replied to a letter of both of you. By this, which I now write to you personally, I wish to let you know my goodwill towards you, and I mean, to prove it. not only by word, but by deed." That promise was not fulfilled, or so inadequately fulfilled, that the help, when it came, was insufficient to meet the needs of the case.

History tells us what the sad consequences were to the cause of civilization in Ireland, from the failure of the Spanish King to realize the greatness of his responsibilities. But the evil struck deeper than to Ireland alone. Europe lost more than her historians have yet realized from the weakness of purpose that let Ireland go down transfixed by the sword of Elizabeth.

Had the fate of Europe been then controlled by a Hohenzollern, instead of by a Habsburg Spaniard, how different might have been the future of the world!

Although Europe has forgotten Ireland, Ireland has never forgotten Europe. Natural outpost and sentinel of that Continent in the West, for three hundred years now gagged and bound, since the flight to Rome of her last native Princes, she stands to-day as in the days of Phillip III, if an outcast from European civilization none the