Page:Roger Casement - The crime against Ireland and how the war may right it.djvu/75

 Rh less rejecting the insular tradition of England, as she has rejected her insular Church. And now once more in her career she turns to the greatest of European sovereigns, to win his eyes to the oldest, and certainly the most faithful of European peoples. Ireland already has given and owes much to Germany. In the dark ages intercourse between the Celtic people of the West and the Rhinelands and Bavaria was close and long sustained. Irish monasteries flourished in the heart of Germany, and German architecture gave its note possibly to some of the fairest cathedral churches in Ireland.

Clonfert and Cashel are, perhaps, among the most conspicuous examples of the influence of that old time intercourse with Germany. To-day, when little of her past remains to venerate, her ancient language on what seemed its bed of death owes much of its present day revival to German scholarship and culture. Probably the foremost Gaelic scholar of the day is the occupant of the Chair of Celtic at Berlin University, and Ireland recognizes with a gratitude she is not easily able to express, all that her ancient literature owes to the genius and loving intellect of Dr. Kuno Meyer.

The name of Ireland may be unknown on the Bourses or in the Chancelleries of Europe; it is not without interest, even fame, in the centres of German academical culture. But that the German State may also be interested in the political fate of Ireland is believed by the present writer. He knows something of the greatness of soul of her ruler, of his breadth of view and of the part he designs, under God, the German people to play in the future of mankind. The task of freeing Ireland and of restoring that exiled island to the current of European life is one worthy of the greatness and strength of the German Kaiser and his people. Where the Kings of Spain, in varying measure promised help and failed to give it. where