Page:Roger Casement - The crime against Ireland and how the war may right it.djvu/79



It would be idle to attempt to forecast the details of a struggle between Great Britain and Germany. That is a task that belongs to the War Departments of the two States. I have assigned myself merely to point out that such a struggle is inevitable, and to indicate what I believe to be the supreme factors in the conflict and how one of these, Ireland, and that undoubtedly the most important factor has been overlooked by practically every predecessor of Germany in the effort to make good at sea. The Spaniards in Elizabeth's reign, the French of Louis XIV and of the Directory took some steps, it is true, to challenge England's control of Ireland, but instead of concentrating their strength upon that line of attack they were content to dissipate it in isolated expeditions and never once to push home the assault on the one point that was so obviously the key to the enemy's whole position. At any period during the last three centuries, with Ireland gone, England was, if not actually at the mercy of her assailants, certainly reduced to impotency beyond her own shores. But while England knew the value to herself of Ireland, she appreciated to the full the fact that this profitable juxtaposition lay on her right side, hidden from the eyes of Europe.

"Will anyone assert," said Gladstone, "that we would have dared to treat Ireland as we have done had she lain, not between us and the ocean, but between us and the Continent?" And while the bulk of England, swollen to enormous dimensions by the gains she drew from Ireland, interposed between her victim and Europe, her Continental adversaries were themselves the victims of that strange mental disease psychologists term the collective illusion. All the world saw that which, in fact, did not exist. The