Word: casement
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...Casement affair, one of the century's most sensational treason cases, has now been reconstructed in a fascinating biography by British Journalist Rene MacColl, who tells the story of a brilliant, unsavory and enigmatic would-be hero...
...Antrim, he joined the British consular service, was stationed in Africa. The Belgian Congo, then being run as a private slave factory by Belgium's King Leopold II, captured his horrified attention. It was a time before Europe knew itself capable of Belsen, and Europe was shocked by Casement's voluminous, angry reports (published in 1904) on torture, floggings and forced labor. Later, he made similar reports for the British Foreign Office about cruel treatment of rubber-plantation workers in Peru. By now, Casement had become a romantic celebrity with something of Byron about him. He was knighted...
Shades of Emmet. Yet Casement was also writing to Irish friends about "Anglo-Britannic swine," about "the Bitch and Harlot of the North Sea." What had happened to Casement? Author MacColl suggests that some snub in the Foreign Office probably set Casement on his devious course, for he was an "oick," i.e., a social outsider. Given the man's pride, ambition, quixotic brilliance and genuine Irish patriotism, this theory is as likely as any other. Yet most of the details of Casement's attempt to win Irish independence were absurd. When he went to Germany...
...When Casement finally landed in Kerry on his ill-fated expedition, he seems to have been near despair, guessing that the scheduled Easter Rising was foredoomed to failure. He actually hoped to prevent it, but it was too late. Foiled and captured, he had only one role left: to die. He did that in style. During his trial. Casement's main preoccupation was the speech he would make from the dock. It came out very well, almost as well as that of Robert Emmet to whom the Irish in America had often compared...
Line of Martyrs. His partisans have often called Casement's sentence and execution a "judicial assassination,'' yet there is a dark blot on his martyr's shroud-the Black Diaries, "200 pages of concentrated erotica," found in his lodgings. If authentic, the diaries proved Casement probably the most industrious sodomite since the days of Heliogabalus. According to Casement's supporters, the diaries were forged, possibly by the British, to destroy Casement's image as a patriot-martyr. The diaries were clearly in his handwriting; Casement's defenders contend implausibly that they were...