Page:Roger Casement - The crime against Ireland and how the war may right it.djvu/90

 84 held in "economic slavery," and that her independence is illusory unless she have free outlet to the sea. But what of Ireland? With not one, but forty ports, the finest in all Western Europe, they lie idle and empty. With over a thousand miles of seaboard, facing the west and holding the seaway between Europe and America, Ireland, in the grip of England, has been reduced to an economic slavery that has no parallel in civilization.

And it is to this island, to this people that the appeal is now made that we should distrust the Germans and aid our enslavers! Better far, were that the only outcome, the fate of Alsace-Lorraine (who got their Home rule Parliament years ago), than the "friendship" of England. We have survived the open hate, the prolonged enslavement, the secular robbery of England and now that England smiles and offers us with one hand "Home Rule" to take it away with the other, are we going to forget the experience of our forefathers? A Connacht proverb of the Middle Ages should come back to us—"three things for a man to avoid: the heels of a horse, the horns of a bull, and the smile of an Englishman!"

That Ireland must be involved in any war that Great Britain undertakes, goes without saying; but that we should willingly throw ourselves into the fray on the wrong side to avert a British defeat, is the counsel of traitors offered to fools. Our part may be at first a passive one, or we may be able to make it something more, but the day a German squadron holds the Irish Sea and communication with Great Britain is cut off, that day shall be the first day of Irish freedom, and the first day of freedom on the seas for Europe.

We must see to it that the day Germany strikes, Ireland shall be there. We must see to it that what was written only a few years ago by a member of the German General Staff shall not be falsified by any act of recreancy