Page:Roger Casement - The crime against Ireland and how the war may right it.djvu/78

 72 freedom. It is because a century has passed since Europe saw Ireland willing to die that to-day Europe has forgotten that she lives.

As I began this essay with a remark of Charles Lever on Germany so shall I end it here with a remark of Lever on his own country, Ireland.

In a letter to a friend in Dublin, he thus put the epitaph of Europe on the grave of a generation who believed that "no human cause was worth the shedding one drop of human blood."

"As to Ireland all foreign sympathy is over owing to the late cowardice and poltroonery of the patriots. Even Italians can fight." (Letter of C. Lever from Florence, August 19th, 1848.)

It is only the truth that wounds. It is that reproach that has cursed Ireland for a century.

Sedition, the natural garment for an Irishman to wear, has been for a hundred years a bloodless sedition. It is this fiery shirt of Nessus that has driven our strong men mad. How to shed our blood with honor, how to give our lives for Ireland—that has been, that is the problem of Irish nationality.

The day the first German comrade lands in Ireland, the day the first German warship is seen proudly breasting the waves of the Irish Sea with the flag of Ireland at her fore, that day many Irishmen must die, but they shall die in the sure peace of God that Ireland may live.