The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1916-08-14
Why Easement Went to Germany

An article written by the Irish pa-
 triot just before he left Germany on
 his ill-fated trip to England.
 I have read so many explanations by others why I went to Germany that a word from myself may not be | inappropriate. Since the responsibill- | ty for my action is my own, am the person best fitted to tell the reasons l for my action.
 In June, 1913, I resigned from the British consular service on the grouE q of i'll health, my intention being to go to South Africa, where both climate
 and surroundings were congenia1. Unhappily the political condition of Ireland claimed consideration from
 me as an Irishman,, since I had always
 been something more than a Home Ruler in feeling, although I had never | taken an active part in politics. My views as an Irish Nationalist of the type were well known in the British Foreign office, and in l1ng.and as
 much as in Ireland, for I never made
 any concealment of them. had stat ed them openly on many occasions in | the press and they were known to the British government as fully as to my own friends.
 Preparatory Gas I tllought) to going I out to the Cape for a period of repose and quiet, within which to place on | record my African and Amazon expe- l riences in the field of tropical re- | search, decided to spend the autumn of 1913 in Ireland to pay some fare | we'll visits. As matters turned out
 found it very hard to leave Ireland. The Carson campaign in Ulster was | then in full blase, and despite an in- ! nate and overcoming desire for re-
 tirement I found myself overborne by the solicitations of my friends to stay
 at home, for a time at any rate. In Ulster, where was most at home, l l tried to keep together the small band of "scattered Protestants' hetre who 1 desired friendship with their Catholic
 fellow countrymen, based on an equal
 recognition of their common Irish identity, against which the forces of
 intolerance and enmity were openly l arrayed.
 The Irish Volunteers.
 In this effort I took part through out the autumn and close of 1913. In | November of that year came the es- l ltablishment of the Irish volunteers at l Dublin. The Irish volunteers sought
 to do for all Ireland what the Ulster volunteers sought for Ulster Urotest- antism alone-to defend the rights and liberties common to a whole peo- l ple-Protestant and Catholic.
 I joined Prof. MacNeill and became a member of the governing body of the volunteers. and with him address ed the first meetings held. ater the in augura1 Dublin meeting. in Galway and Cork in December, 1913.
 An incident at this time occurred that added weight to the conviction I already held, that no English govern
 ment, whether 1t called itself Whig or Tory, was capable of treating Ireland with justice. I refer to the abandon
 ment of the port of Queenstown by the large Cunard vessels on the alleged ground of its dangerous character, and the subsequent action taken against the Hamburg American line, which had announced it's intention start ling line of steamships to call at Queenstown en route to Boston. The exclusion of the ships or the
 Hamburg g-American line from Cork harbor by the action of the British au- thorities was an unfriendly act to Ire-
 land and was accomplished by an un1 derhand diplomacy that would have been unfriendly to a foreign state. How much more significant was it when the interests assailed and the people injured by this intervention were those of "an integral part" of the realm, whose government was suppos- edly that of United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, bound as much in law and honor to the service of the one island as to the other. Here was great Irish port doubly injured by England, first by the Eng
 fish company which repudiates it's public contract with the support of the government whose duty it was to com
 pei its maintenance; next, when a great foreign shipping company under
 takes to call at this Irish port and perform services of great advantage