British Consul, Irish Martyr

Roger Casement By Brian Inglis Harcourt, 448 pp., $8.95 Now that the Irish Question has resolved itself into the Ulster Question, it is especially good to have this biography of Roger Casement. The author, like his subject, is an Ulster Protestant, and one of the things he has done in Roger Casement is show how an Ulster Protestant can also be an Irishman. Historically, regardless of what Ian Paisley may imply, there is nothing unusual about a Protestant nationalist; Wolfe Tone, Robert Emmet, John Mitchel, Charles Parnell were all Protestants. What sets Casement apart is that he was knighted for services to the British Empire before being hanged for treason.

In fact, had the British not, with the stupidity they displayed throughout their handling of the 1916 Easter Rising, made Roger Casement a martyr, he would be remembered today less as an Irish patriot than as the man who exposed the Belgians’ atrocities in the Congo and the Peruvians’ atrocities in the Putumayo. It was Casement’s report that finally broke Leopold’s stranglehold over the Congo; his Putumayo report caused less of a stir, but won Casement his official knighthood (Joseph Conrad, among others, had dubbed him unofficial knight errant long before).

About the Author

Linda Bridges

Ms. Bridges is the former editor-at-large of National Review.

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Roger Casement By Brian Inglis Harcourt, 448 pp., $8.95 Now that the Irish Question has resolved itself into the Ulster Question, it is especially good to have this biography of Roger Casement. The author, like his subject, is an Ulster Protestant, and one of the things he has done in Roger Casement is show how an Ulster Protestant can also be an Irishman. Historically, regardless of what Ian Paisley may imply, there is nothing unusual about a Protestant nationalist; Wolfe Tone, Robert Emmet, John Mitchel, Charles Parnell were all Protestants. What sets Casement apart is that he was knighted for services to the British Empire before being hanged for treason.

In fact, had the British not, with the stupidity they displayed throughout their handling of the 1916 Easter Rising, made Roger Casement a martyr, he would be remembered today less as an Irish patriot than as the man who exposed the Belgians’ atrocities in the Congo and the Peruvians’ atrocities in the Putumayo. It was Casement’s report that finally broke Leopold’s stranglehold over the Congo; his Putumayo report caused less of a stir, but won Casement his official knighthood (Joseph Conrad, among others, had dubbed him unofficial knight errant long before).